Even if you don’t own a PS3 or PSP, you no doubt know all about the breach of cyber security which led to the PlayStation Network being out of commission for roughly one month. With E3 just coming to a close, nobody is really paying attention to other gaming news; but there’s been an interesting development in regards to the hacker attack. The New York Times has broken the news that three Spanish men have been arrested for cyber crimes. The men are believed to hold leadership roles in the group ‘Anonymous’ and to have played some part in the April attack on the PSN.
Anonymous’ organizational flow is believed to be setup much like a terrorist network: individual cells pop up around the world and are capable of operating independently of centralized leadership, but all pursue common goals. That’s why it’s so interesting that the Spanish authorities have referred to the three men that were arrested as “local leadership” of the group. All three Spaniards are males in their early 30s and were said to have been taken into custody “recently”, but no exact dates were provided.
They have since been released without need for bail, but they will be charged with “forming an illegal association to attack public and corporate Web sites”. If convicted, they could serve up to three years in prison. Their precise connection to the PSN attack is not yet known, but they are believed to have played a part in it, as well as in a number of other high-profile cyber attacks. We do know that one of the suspects, a 31-year-old, was in possession of a computer used in some way to attack the PlayStation Network. It was also utilized to break into two Spanish banks, an Italian energy company and government sites in the following countries: Spain, Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Iran, Chile, Colombia and New Zealand.
The organization to which they belong, made use of the program LOIC to bring down sites by flooding them with denial-of-service attacks. In the case of the PSN, mass amounts of user data was also compromised and the Sony has estimated that the attack will set them back a cool 173 million in USD. We’ll bring you more on this story as it develops.
[Source: The New York Times]
[Image via Laist.]
