Spain: 3 arrested for Sony hack
June 10, 2011
The Spanish police have arrested three suspected computer hackers in connection with recent cyber-attacks on Sony’s PlayStation network as well as corporate and government websites around the world. The police said that with the arrests, they had dismantled the local leadership of Anonymous, the shadowy international network of computer hackers.
According to the statement, Anonymous is made up of people from various countries organised into cells that share common goals. The activists operate anonymously, but in a coordinated fashion.
One of the “hacktivist” detainees, the police said, had a computer server in an apartment in the northern port city of Gijon, from which the group attacked the Web sites of the Sony PlayStation online gaming store.
The police said members of Anonymous made use of a computer program called LOIC to crash websites by flooding them with denial of service attacks. The arrests follow an investigation that commenced last October, when hackers overwhelmed the Spanish Ministry of Culture’swWebsite to protest Spanish legislation increasing punishments for illegal downloads.