Spanish police arrest three alleged members of Anonymous
11 Jun 2011
The Spanish police is reported to have arrested three men on suspicion of being members of the hacker group `Anonymous.' The men who were arrested yesterday have been charged with organising cyber attacks on the websites of Sony Corp, banks and governments -- not the hacking of PlayStation gamers.
Anonymous is also reported to have threatened to retaliate - "We are Legion, so EXPECT US," the group said on its official Twitterfeed. According to the Spanish police, the three "hacktivists" helped organise an attack that temporarily shuttered access to some Sony websites.
They were, however, not linked to two massive cyber attacks against Sony's Playstation Network that led to the theft of information of over 100 million customers.
The two have also been accused of launching cyber assaults on Spanish banks BBVA and Bankia, and Italian energy group Enel SpA. The arrests come as the first in Spain against alleged members of Anonymous, following the detention of others in the US and Britain.
The three men were in their 30s and Spanish, Reuters quoted police as saying. One of the three worked in the merchant navy.
Anonymous is a loose group comprising self-proclaimed hactivists who try to take down websites of businesses and other organisations they oppose.
Anonymous members calling themselves internet freedom fighters have hacked websites of the Church of Scientology, as also Amazon.com Inc, MasterCard Inc and others they viewed as hostile to WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. Anonymous members bring down websites with "denial of service" attacks meaning they overwhelm the targets with traffic.