Sony Cyberattack Arrests Made in Spain

Spanish police said Friday they inactive three members of the Unnamed hacking aggroup who allegedly directed attacks on banks, government activity websites and companies including Sony.

Spain said it was the first law operation in the country dedicated to trailing falling Unnamed, a decentralized group of activists World Health Organization have decorated distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDOS) against businesses and organizations. The arrests were made in Barcelona, Alicante, and Valencia.

Those arrested helped direct the attacks connected the websites for the Sony PlayStation Store, the swear BBVA, the Italian utility company ENEL and websites belonging to the governments of Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Iran, Chile, Colombia and New Zealand, Spanish police aforesaid. The names of those arrested were not released by law.

Targets for Unnamed have enclosed the Scientology website and companies that lop off dealings with the whistle blower WikiLeaks website, such as Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Amazon.com and PostFinance, a Swiss financial organization.

The loose-knit group attracted followers who downloaded a tool named the Insufficient Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC), a simple DDOS tool to economic aid in the attacks. Some of the more technically adept Anonymous members used botnets, or networks of hacked computers, to carry out DDOS attacks.

In Spain, the police said Unknown has attacked the websites of the Catalan police, and in May, the Central Electoral Board and the UGT merchandise union.

How The Investigating Worked

The body politic's Technological Investigation Brigade, division of the People Police, analyzed Sir Thomas More than 2 million lines of chat logs also as web pages to find those who were arrested.

The investigation started in October 2020 afterward Spain's Ministry of Culture came under a DDOS onrush that was organized through with websites and chat networks by Anonymous, police said.

During one of the raids, police found software misused to make up malware. The mathematical group also allegedly used sophisticated techniques to code their communications, which draw it difficult for police to wiretap and name. Two of those arrested did non even have their own Internet connection and instead relied on hacking other Wisconsin-Fi networks for their activities.

In January, U.K. law arrested threesome teenagers and two some other people for allegedly taking part in a series of denial-of-service attacks against major websites as part of Nameless. The fin males, who zero in age from 15 to 26, were charged with offenses under the Computer Misuse Act of 1990.

(Leo King of Computerworld UK contributed to this written report.)

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