'Anonymous' Hackers Arrested in Spain; Can Sony, MasterCard Finally Breathe?
Large corporates such as Playstation’s Sony and credit card giant Mastercard who were thrown into frenzy after their servers were allegedly hacked by members of the ‘Anonymous’ hacktivist group may have a good reason to scout the Spanish police officers responsible for tracking and finally capturing three alleged perpetrators.
According to the Spanish police, the three individuals arrested today June 10, 2011, are suspects to the group ‘Anonymous’ who carried out the widely-known malign hacking of Sony’s Playstation Network as well as government institutions other renown businesses including Spain’s second largest bank, BBVA.
The identities of the three suspects are yet to be released by the Spanish police who claimed to have also apprehended a server the hackers used to coordinate and execute the attacks, a device that can play out as solid evidence according to the BBC.
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The Spanish authorities in coordination with the provincial police stated that the members were captured in the cities of Almeria, Barcelona, and Valencia and that captured were the representatives of the organization’s leadership in the country.
Do these arrests signal any significant decrease to hacking threats around the world?
Although arresting hackers may prove to intimidate and discourage further similar activites among other parties, in the particular case of ‘Anonymous’, these three arrested individuals could be regarded as ‘minors’ in an organization that has spun its network around the world and consists of several members.
According to a Bloomberg’ report, John D’Arcy, IT assistant professor in the University of Notre Dame, stated that “the arrests would have ‘little impact’ in abating Anonymous’s activities because many of the accused hackers are minors and [Anonymous] is widely dispersed geographically.”
‘Anonymous’ gained an infamous wide-spread notoriety last December after attempting to hack EBay’s Paypal unit, Visa Inc. who had disabled the confidential files-revealing institution, Wikileaks, from receiving donations from the general public.
