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Three Arrested For Sony/Egypt Hacks

Posted by Soulskill on from the enjoy-the-backlash dept.

jimmij0770 writes "Three people accused of being behind cyberattacks on the Sony PlayStation store, the Egyptian government and other targets have been arrested in Spain. Quoting: 'Spanish National Police announced the arrests Friday in a statement that alleged the three in custody are leaders of the Spanish section of Anonymous, a loose-knit international activist group that has claimed attacks on companies such as Visa and MasterCard and on government websites. At least one spokesperson for the group had denied responsibility for the attacks on Sony through its AnonOps blog. ... The statement said police began their investigation in October 2010 following a complaint of a denial of service attack on Spain's Ministry of Culture. They analyzed more than two million lines of chat logs and web pages used by the hackers in order to find the three people who were arrested.'"

3 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. video by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    surreal speech from the spanish police about the operation: http://www.rtve.es/noticias/20110610/anonymous-va-seguir-pero-hemos-desmantelado-principal-servidor-espana/438788.shtml they compare anonymouse with al qaeda.. and they justify the sophisticated skills of the hackers with arguments like "they use wifi networks".. it looks like a monty python film..

    1. Re:video by rbollinger · · Score: 3, Informative
      Is there more in the video that's not in the article? Because your comment is a way off:

      Aunque las acciones llevadas a cabo en la red pudieran "parecer trastadas", considera Vázquez, constituyen un auténtico "peligro". No en vano, "la OTAN considera estos 'ciberataques' una verdadera amenaza junto con Al Qaeda", recuerda el comisario de la BIT.

      Google Translated:

      Although the actions undertaken in the network would " seem pranks "believes Vazquez, are a real "danger" . Not surprisingly, "NATO considers this 'cyber' a real threat along with Al Qaeda," says the curator of the BIT.

      Basically it says NATO considers cyber attacks to be a real threat, just like Al Qaeda is a real threat. I don't see the Spanish Police saying anything that equates these hackers to AQ.

  2. They mean IRC chanops by marcansoft · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's basically what makes them "leaders of Anonymous", according to the police. Supposedly one of them ran an IRC server at home and the three were IRC operators. That's all. There's even a hilarious police screenshot featuring an IRC client and three huge red arrows. Because everyone knows that huge red arrows means they're the Bad Guys.

    They're blaming some of the playstation store DDoS attacks on them (which Anonymous did take responsibility for), as well as DDoSing the SGAE (spanish RIAA) and some government websites as a response to recent legislation and social unrest. None of this has nothing to do with the PSN breach, it was just the usual Anonymous DDoS modus operandi.

    New IRC server up in three, two, ... oh, wait, they probably set one up within minutes, certainly before Slashdot managed to pick up the story.

    All of this seems to be a useless operation just so they can claim that they got *someone* for some of the DDoS attacks on government sites. Even the police knows this isn't going to stop anything, they're just making it look like some big breakthrough to appease the "victims" of the attacks.

    They're charging them with a violation that could get them one to three years in prison. So, for now they're free (you don't get preventative imprisonment for that kind of charge), and I'd say there's a pretty good chance they'll end up dropping the charges due to lack of evidence.