Spanish Police Site Goes Dark Following Anonymous Arrests

[Earnest Cavalli]

Spanish Police Site Goes Dark Following Anonymous Arrests

Hacker collective Anonymous is nothing if not vengeful, a lesson the Spanish National Police learned Sunday evening.

For those who have somehow managed to ignore Anonymous' widespread "hactivist" hijinks of late, I offer a recap of the facts so far.

From April 21 to May 14 of this year the PlayStation Network was offline [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/109448-PSN-Down-Worldwide-Is-Anonymous-to-Blame] following what Sony dubbed an "external intrusion." Anonymous was allegedly responsible.

On June 10, Spanish National Police announced the arrest of three men [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/110942-Anonymous-PSN-Attackers-Arrested-in-Spain] they alleged were part of Anonymous' "core group" and were directly tied to the PSN disruption. At 9:30PM Greenwich Mean Time on June 12, the website of the Spanish National Police suddenly disappeared from the Internet.

National Police officials refuse to confirm what caused the website outage, but AnonOps Communications (a blog linked to Anonymous) claims the group is responsible [http://anonops.blogspot.com/2011/06/spain-anonymous-takes-down-national.html].

"The attack is a direct response to the Friday arrests of three individuals alleged to be associated with acts of cyber civil disobedience attributed to Anonymous," the blog states.

Immediately following the arrests in Spain, Anonymous issued a press release that, in hindsight, seems to be warning of this attack on the National Police website.

"You have not detained three participants of Anonymous. We have no members and we are not a group of any kind. You have, however, detained three civilians expressing themselves," the press release reads.

"You are providing us with the fuel, but now you must expect the fire."

The Spanish National Police website has since been restored [http://www.policia.es/], and unless my español is failing me, offers no mention of the outage.

Source: BBC [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13749181]
(Image [http://anonops.blogspot.com/2011/06/spain-anonymous-takes-down-national.html])

(Edited to clarify link between Anonymous and PSN outage. We apologize for any confusion.)



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[Sniper Team 4]

I knew they'd pull something. Typical. At least it wasn't something serious like trying to get info of the children of the officers. Although given some time, I'm sure that's what they'll do. I hate these guys.

 

[Dango]

So three members (and yes, they are members) of Anon are arrested for perfectly valid reasons, and Anon responds with a cyber attack?

You stay classy Anon.

 

[Rauten]

Your "español" is not failing you. There literally is nothing about it.
Also, ew, horrible website is horrible; Hope I never have to use it.

 

[Weaver]

This article is not factual; Anonymous (and i mean anon-ops) DENIED involvement with PSN, they did not take credit for the attack.

 

[luvd1]

Not really sure that logic works. Whether or not they "belong" to anno isn't the issue. Whether they took part in the hacking of psn is. If they did then they must expect the possibility of being caught and banged up. You can't ***** about having your collar felt if you piss against a policeman.

 

[Varya]

Talk about misstep. Now they've moved on to basically demanding that the police stay away from them, they are blackmailing the police. That's not gonna end well

 

[DJDarque]

This is just stupid. Anonymous can claim to be "hacktivists" all they want, but in my book they're no better than Lulzsec.

"Oh, no! They actually managed to catch a few of us. We best 'teach them a lesson' for doing their jobs."

 

[The Wykydtron]

Aha this should be interesting... *Popcorn tiemz*

I'm glad Anon still have their melodramatic lines. There's an interesting contrast between that and LulSec's brazen "Did you see that? LOL"

 

[mumakil]

The actual news topic is incorrect as AC10 said. Sony accused anonymous of breaking the PSN as apparently there had been a callcard. Anonymous denied any ties to the attack.

I would find the news links but im too lazy.


Edit: nevermind. Fail post is fail post on my part it seems . Totally forgot sony got hacked before the PSN debacle.

 

[RA92]

Funny how everyone's taking the Spanish police's words without any questioning. It's quite an amazing coincidence that the ones they're arresting for hacking PSN also happens to be hacktivists railing against the corrupt Spanish government.

Ah well. I'm not believing a word they are claiming without first having been shown the PSN user database on their servers. All I've heard so far is they tried to DDoS some government sites.

Edit: Just as I suspected. These guys have been freed.

http://www.eleconomista.es/espana/noticias/3145118/06/11/Los-tres-presuntos-miem
bros-de-Anonymous-detenidos-hoy-han-sido-ya-puestos-en-libertad.html

<quote=Reuters>"Spanish police alleged the three "hacktivists" helped organize an attack that temporarily shuttered access to some Sony websites. <color=red>They were not linked to two massive cyber attacks against Sony's Playstation Network that resulted in the theft of information from more than 100 million customers."


All you butthurt angry fanbois can stop screaming for blood now.

These people were, in fact, part of the Spanish 15-M group. A little background info...

<spoiler=Post from a Spanish commenter>For those who don't know what is happening with the 15-M Movement in Spain, that's how the police in Barcelona tried to end with a pacific manifestation alledging they wanted to allow a path for the cleaning trucks on Catalunya Square: <youtube=Geg_6Xoy04s>

The SINDE law in Spain, that wants to terminate file-sharing, was supposedly instigated by the US according to Wikileaks. The people revealed against it the first time they tried to approve it, so it was posponed and approved two weeks later at people's backs. That's how defective democracy is when it defends big lobbies interests.

I also suppose that you are aware of whats happening with Monsanto in the US and across all other countries (due to modified seeds that pollynize natural seeds, the latter lose their natural purity, and can't ever be recovered, and how Montsant sues small agricultors because the wind carries their modified seeds to other farmer's fields, when these families have been harvesting natural crops for generations... by the way, Kellog's didn't want to tell Interantional Ammesty if the use modified crops in their products...). There are no investigations against Monsanto 'cos they have important ex-employees working at the Agriculture and Environment US Government Depts.

For these kind of companies that commit crimes against the whole humanity, i'm content that hackers can do something to minimize their impact, as these powers that be are playing with their own rules with total impunity thanks to these "laws" tailored by-and-to-them (to avoid misunderstandings, i'm not justifying attacks to Sony here, though i think they committed a mistake purposedly converting GeoHotz case in a public witch hunt to instigate fear in others that would think of hacking their devices, it was logic this provoked a strong reaction against them).

And of course in Spain, our dear banks use our money to invest in weapons bussiness, like BBVA or Banco Santander. These are the things that the 15-M movement wants to change. Because you know that Island citizens managed to change the laws right? the lack of news about it shows how controlled media is by large corporations, they don't want people to know about it, imagine such popular rebellion grand scale were they could not create artificial wars anymore to feed their business or increase the warehouse prices a 400% in 3 years, to name a few.

To end this, i remember now the World Health Organization ruckus some years ago when they declared the last flu as a pandemia, when according to their own definition at their website there needs to be many thousands of affected to be considered as pandemia, when there were only a few hundred official cases diagnosed. When they declare something a pandemia, countries are obligued to buy vaccines by a certain agreement... to whom? pharmaceutical lobbies of course. Many governments, Spanish included, spent hundreds of millions of euros in unused vaccines in the end. These millions, as many others withdrawn with such technocratic methods, could have served to alleviate the crisis we are living in Spain since 4 years ago.

That's the stuff that the 15-M movement wants to change, and it would be good that people would try to get rid of these innoculed capitalist egoism aside certain moments during the day to think about these questions. Our capacity of empathy has been atrofied by many reasons.

This goes deep.

 

[Weaver]

This article is not factual; Anonymous (and i mean anon-ops) DENIED involvement with PSN, they did not take credit for the attack.

Not PSN. They took down Sony's website for some period before the PSN hack happened, though. In support of Geohot and his then-active case.

Surprised they arrested anyone for that though. It was harmless.

I do certainly recall this happening.

 

[Braedan]

so.... are they trying to get governments to crack down on free use of the internet? If you attack government institutions they will respond. Idiots. Now they are starting to threaten all our free use, even if this was relativly minor.

 

[Awexsome]

Just organized criminals trying to fight against the law that's trying to bring them to justice.

Completely expected.

 

[JWRosser]

Oh for God's sake. The police were just doing their job. This is ridiculous.

 

[Nudu]

Just organized criminals trying to fight against the law that's trying to bring them to justice.

Completely expected.

I'm with this guy

 

[CthulhuRlyeh]

Would these dumbasses please stop pretending as if they are our knights in shining white armor?

 

[-Samurai-]

So, the three that the caught are part of Anon. I expect them to be sentenced to the fullest possible term for their crimes.

Anyone that seriously believes that Anon isn't a structured group with actual members is a moron.