An 18-year-old student in northwestern England has been charged in a series of cyberattacks on the websites of nearly a dozen multinational firms.

Jack Chappell is accused of supplying software that crashes websites by flooding them with data and with running a help-desk for cyber criminals.

West Midlands Police said in a statement that "Chappell allegedly attacked the websites of T-Mobile, EE, Vodafone, O2, BBC, BT, Amazon, Netflix, Virgin Media and the National Crime Agency."

Chappel has been charged with impairing the operation of computers under the Computer Misuse Act, plus encouraging or assisting an offense and money laundering crime proceeds together with an American national.

He is also accused of assisting hackers in a 2015 attack on NatWest.

The force's cybercrime unit worked with the FBI, Israeli Police and Europol's European Cybercrime Centre during the investigation.