Spain"s National Police have today announced the arrest of three suspected hackers, who are believed to be leaders of a section of the infamous "Anonymous" group.
A computer server was apparently found in their home which was used to co-ordinate and launch attacks on several targets, including two major Spanish banks, an Italian energy company and the governments of several countries such as Egypt and New Zealand. Last month the New Zealand government reported outages after receiving threats from the hacking group Anonymous, according to a report by stuff.co.nz.
This is not the first time action has been taken against certain members of the organisation, the United States and the United Kingdom have been known to take a strong stance on those that are unable to protect their identity. However this is the first story of Spain taking on a group of people that are by name, very hard to catch.
The arrests were specifically made in Barcelona, Valencia and the southern city of Almeria. In the police"s report though, they"ve been leading up to this moment for quite some time. Analysing over two million lines of online conversation and webpages since October last year, they finally managed to track down the three individuals.
The hacking group have been known for their threats and attacks, just yesterday Neowin covered a story of their threat to NATO in regards to a crackdown on cybercrime. However incidents previously that have involved many Anonymous users disrupting service of credit card and payment companies amongst various governments, have made them a serious target for crime agencies around the world.