Spain's National Police apprehended three suspects connected to last month's attack on PlayStation Network by hacker collective Anonymous.
The police made the arrests in Barcelona, Alicante, Almeria, and seized a server hosted in Gijon as part of its raids. The suspects allegedly directed operations for Anonymous,
according to a report from Reuters.
Investigators say the suspects are in their 30s, and believe the trio was involved in not just the intrusion that forced Sony to take PSN offline for a month, but also hacks against Spanish banks BBVA and Bankia, as well as a cyber-attack on Italian energy group Enel SpA.
Backing those claims, the Spanish police released
screenshots from IRC chat logs supposedly showing the group discussing plans to hack Spain's Central Electoral Board and local police websites, possibly in response to proposed legislation against file-sharing in Spain.
In a statement released today, the Spanish police warned against the damage that Anonymous is capable of inflicting: "They are structured in independent cells and make thousands of simultaneous attacks using infected 'zombie' computers worldwide."
"This is why NATO considers them a threat to the military alliance. They are even capable of collapsing a country's administrative structure," the statement continued.
These arrests come just a day after Sony's deputy president Kazuo Hirai
told BBC News that the hackers were "very good at hiding their tracks" and that the company "may never know" what personal data they were able to retrieve from users' accounts.
Reports of security breaches for video game publishers have been on the rise recently, including a series of attacks against Sony by Anonymous, a seemingly harmless
hack against Nintendo by LulzSec, and
an intrusion at Codemasters' site last week.
