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Police in Spain arrested four suspected hacktivists belonging to the collective Anonymous, for a series of Internet-based attacks on Spanish websites, a computer security firm reported.

 

Sophos said the four were arrested in Madrid and Malaga, and were linked to attacks on the websites of Spanish political parties, companies and the Spanish police force.

 

“Websites were not just hit by denial-of-service attacks, but in some cases were also defaced and had information stolen from them,” Sophos said in a blog post Wednesday, Manila time.

 

It cited the case of the attack on the website of the “Union Progress and Democracy” party (UpyD) where the site was defaced with images of people bearing vampire-like fangs.

 

Other than the four, 10 Anonymous suspects were also indicted in Argentina, six in Chile and five in Colombia, Sophos quoted a Spanish police press release as saying.

 

The Sophos blog post said one of the arrested suspects, “Thunder” a.k.a. “Pacotron,” allegedly managed the IT infrastructure used by Anonymous in Spain and Latin America.

 

Also, it noted the Internet chat servers based in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria that were managed from Spain by “Thunder” were shut down.

 

Police also seized 25 computers and other storage devices for examination. — TJD, GMA News