Three Anonymous Members Arrested in Spain, Tied to Attacks on Sony Sites

Anonymous responds with a statement, apparent denial of service attack on Spain's national police website.

Authorities in Spain have arrested three men with links to hacker activist group Anonymous, charging them with organizing cyber attacks against Sony. Anonymous has already responded, knocking the website for Spain's national police force offline.

As Reuters reports, the arrests occurred on Friday in Almeria, Barcelona, and Alicante, with Spanish police referring to the three men as "core members" of Anonymous. The men, all in their 30s, were charged with the recent attacks on Sony websites, but authorities said they were not linked to the massive April 19 attack on PlayStation Network.

"They are structured in independent cells and make thousands of simultaneous attacks using infected 'zombie' computers worldwide," Spanish police said in a statement describing Anonymous. "This is why NATO considers them a threat to the military alliance. They are even capable of collapsing a country's administrative structure."

On Sunday, the website for Spain's national police force went offline, and though Spanish authorities have yet to provide a reason for the outage, Anonymous promised it would respond to the arrest of its members in a statement:

We know you have heard of us; We are Anonymous. It has come to our attention that you deemed it necessary to arrest three of our fellow anons, ... which you claim to be the leaders of Anonymous and for their participation in DDoS attacks against various websites...

First and foremost, DDoSing is an act of peaceful protest on the Internet. The activity is no different than sitting peacefully in front of a shop denying entry. Just as is the case with traditional forms of protest...

Regardless of how many times you are told, you refuse to understand. There are no leaders of Anonymous. Anonymous is not based on personal distinction...

Arresting somebody for taking part in a DDoS attack is exactly like arresting somebody for attending a peaceful demonstration in their hometown. Anonymous believes this right to peacefully protest is one of the fundamental pillars of any democracy...

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...

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

In related news, Nintendo and Epic Games have confirmed that their websites were the victims of cyber security breaches over the weekend. The attacks continue the trend of sites linked to video games becoming the victims of hackers.

Club Nintendo was taken offline for maintenance after Nintendo reports it detected a phishing threat and Epic Games took down all of its sites after it was discovered forum member user names and passwords were compromised. The studio is now recommending that all forum members change their passwords.

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