Spain’s Guardia Civil police have arrested three ‘pro-Russian hackers’ for alleged cyberattacks against Spain and other NATO countries ‘for terrorist purposes’, the force said on Saturday.
The suspects were detained for their alleged participation in ‘distributed denial of service (DDoS)’ cyber attacks against public institutions and strategic sectors, the Guardia Civil said.
A DDoS attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic.
The cyberattacks were allegedly carried out against web pages of public and private organisations in the government sectors, critical infrastructures and essential services in countries which support Ukraine in the conflict with Russia, it said.
Police released a video on social media (see below) of a raid at the home of one of the suspects in which a Soviet-era hammer and sickle flag was mounted on a wall.
‘These computer attacks have been organised by the hacktivist group NoName057(16) … after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and [which has been] one of the most active,’ the Guardia Civil said.
‘In their own founding manifesto, this group acknowledges that they “will respond proportionately in response to the hostile and openly anti-Russian actions of Western Russophobe”‘.’
The arrests took place in Manacor on the island of Mallorca, and in Huelva and Seville (Andalusia), the police said. The investigation is on-going.
#OperacionesGC | Tres detenidos por delitos de daños
— Guardia Civil (@guardiacivil) July 20, 2024
informáticos con fines terroristas.
Habrían participado voluntariamente en la realización
de ataques de denegación de servicios organizados por el grupo hacktivista NoName057(16)#GuardiaCivil pic.twitter.com/1Py28lIUkp
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