Three Arrested For Sony/Egypt Hacks

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.'"

Comments

Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish the media would hurry up and realize how stupid they sound saying "leaders of anonymous."

Re:Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

What's stupid is continuing to pretend "Anonymous" is really just a few unconnected anonymous individuals working independently.

You're EDITORS so EDIT!

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

Three people accused of being behind cyberattacks on the Sony PlayStation store, the Egyptian government and other targets have been arrested in Spain.

Really? Three people, along with the Egyptian government and other targets have been arrested in Spain? What was the Egyptian government doing in Spain? Was is on a vacation? That must have made quite the arrest.

Hint, this would have been much clearer:

Three people have been arrested in Spain for cyberattacks targeting the Sony PlayStation store, the Egyptian government, and others.

video

[Anonymous Coward]

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..

Re:video

[rbollinger]

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.

Huh..

[laxguy]

Why is it that no one is discussing the article, or the implications of the arrests.. everyone is commenting on how you can't name the leader of Anonymous..

Just because you think you know what Anonymous is, doesn't mean that everyone else does.. it's easier to say there is a "leader" than to explain what it really is..not to mention that fact that they are doing this to themselves. When they start releasing statements and using Twitter and shit, someone is in charge of those things, hence the "leader" tag.

Lets try talking about the article instead of pretending we're cool enough to know how Anonymous works.

The propaganda has begun

[mykos]

A few scapegoats who may not even be connected to the actual hackers are going to prison because governments want appear to be capable of capturing them.

They mean IRC chanops

[marcansoft]

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.

Re:They mean IRC chanops

[RdeCourtney]

So they show: http://a.yfrog.com/img614/4012/cg4eai.jpg and then they're running Tor and uTorrent, I wonder what Torrents they're downloading whilst using Paint to put in big red arrows on an IRC chat? I wonder what the burning coliseum icon is?

Re:i wonder....

[Cogita]

Isn't LOIC one of the preferred tools of Anonymous? It shouldn't be that difficult to track down the developers. The project has both SourceForge and Github accounts.

Isn't it a valid tool for stress testing websites developed by several individuals collectively? Sounds like you want to blame the creator of dynamite because some people use it to blow up bridges. Just because a tool can be used for a wrong purpose doesn't mean we blame the maker. Blame those who use it that way.