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LONDON — An 18-year-old British man was arrested on Friday in connection with a hacking attack that temporarily shut down the computer networks for Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation 4 video game consoles on Christmas Day.

The man, who was not identified, was arrested in the north of England for potentially providing false information to law enforcement agencies in the United States, according to a statement by the British police, which was working on the case with the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. He was arrested on charges of unauthorized access to computer material, the British police said.

British police said those activities included so-called swatting, in which someone informs the American police of false threats that lead to tactical S.W.A.T. units being deployed.

The attack against the computer networks run by Microsoft and Sony, for which the hacker activist group known as Lizard Squad had claimed responsibility, led to many gamers’ complaining worldwide on Dec. 25 that they could not access their accounts.

The online hacks came on the same day that Sony Pictures began streaming “The Interview,” a film at the center of a separate online attack against Sony’s computer network linked to North Korea, through online portals like Microsoft’s Xbox service.

It is unclear what the man’s role may have been in the cyberattack against Microsoft and Sony’s video gaming services. The attacks included a denial of service attack, in which servers are flooded with Internet traffic until they collapse under the load.

“We are still at the early stages of the investigation, and there is still much work to be done,” said Craig Jones, head of cybercrime at the South East Regional Organized Crime Unit in Britain. “Cybercrime is an issue which has no boundaries and affects people on a local, regional and global level.”

A spokeswoman for the British police declined to comment on how long the country’s enforcement agencies had been working with the F.B.I. on the case.