Police in Spain have arrested three people associated with the clandestine Web group known as Anonymous for their alleged role in recent hacks of Sony's systems, government Web sites, and more.
Police made arrests in Barcelona, Alicante, and Almeria. A server hosted in the city of Gijon was also seized, according to information posted on the Twitter feed of the Spanish police.
The hackers attacked the Playstation Network, as well as government Web sites in Egypt, Iran, Colombia, and Chile, officials said. They also targeted Spain's Central Election Board on May 18. Police released a screenshot that showed an IRC chat where organizers urged Anonymous members to attack the election board Web site, as well as those for the Spanish police and broadcaster RTVE, among others.
The unnamed individuals "have the capacity to make decisions and direct attacks," the police said. They have "coordinated DDoS attacks to collapse Web sites around the world and are considered a threat by NATO."
Earlier this week, Anonymous issued a warning after NATO named the group as an enemy among the likes of Al Qaeda and North Korea. "Do not make the mistake of challenging Anonymous. Do not make the mistake of believing you can behead a headless snake. If you slice off one head of Hydra, ten more heads will grow in its place. If you cut down one Anon, ten more will join us purely out of anger at your trampling of dissent," Anonymous said in a statement.
With the arrests, the police said they have dismantled Anonymous in Spain, but Panda Labs analyst Luis Corrons wasn't so sure.
"I fear that nothing is further from the truth," according to a translated version of Corrons' blog post. "We must remember that Anonymous is a very anarchic and that it has no hierarchy as such."
Corrons said he expects Anonymous to retaliate in the next few hours since they are not used to being held accountable for their actions.
Indeed, Anonymous does not take kindly to police intervention. Back in January, British police arrested five men for their alleged involvement in a string of DDoS attacks that targeted the Web sites of Visa, MasterCard, Amazon, and PayPal. The companies stopped processing payments and cut hosting ties with WikiLeaks after it released 250,000 State Department cables in late November, a move with which Anonymous disagreed. Anonymous subsequently accused the UK government of making a "sad mistake" with the arrests.
As Sophos analyst Graham Cluley pointed out, authorities are no doubt "hoping that that [the Gijon server] may yield clues which will help reveal the identities of other Anonymous activists."
The Web site that has posted news updates from Anonymous, anonnews.yup.name, currently says that it is "experiencing heavy DDoS attacks combined with a spike in legitimate traffic."
Sony has not yet commented on the arrests in Spain, but the company has suggested in recent weeks that Anonymous was involved in the massive hack that took down its systems for almost a month. Last month, Sony told members of Congress that one of its Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) servers contained a file called "Anonymous" with the words "We Are Legion," the group's tagline. The discovery came after Anonymous attacked Sony-branded Web sites to protest Sony's lawsuits. An Anonymous offshoot known as "SonyRecon" also targeted individual Sony employees.
In response, a sometimes spokesman for Anonymous said the group has never engaged in credit card theft (which happened in the PlayStation hack) and that many of its corporate adversaries engage in activities far more ethically suspect than Anonymous. The main problem with such a statement is that Anonymous is a rather splintered group. If you say you are a member of Anonymous, you are a member of Anonymous, and there is no one to police your activity or kick you out if you misbehave.
More recently, it has been hacker group LulzSec that has been openly targeting Sony. They hacked into SonyPictures.com and also offered up 54MB of Sony Computer Entertainment Developer Network source code. The group has thus far not commented on the arrests in Spain.