A suspected hacker accused of attacking a University of Hong Kong website running a mock "universal suffrage" poll for the chief executive election last year was charged yesterday after almost 10 months of investigation.
Another suspect, aged 17, arrested with the defendant in March, was freed unconditionally after investigation, police said.
The cyberattack on the system of the university's public opinion programme took place shortly before the 1,193-voter election that picked Leung Chun-ying to serve as the chief executive until 2017.
The university reported a suspected "distributed denial-of-service" attack - in which multiple systems flood a targeted system - to police.
The organisers reported up to a million hits per second on their system, which was capable of handling just a couple of dozen hits at a time.