Four cuffed in Spain over political website vandalism

KO crew knocked out

Spanish police have arrested four people of a hacking crew blamed for defacing the websites of the main two political parties in Spain.

As well as allegedly adding a red fist to the site of PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español) and PP (Partido Popular), the hackers also sprayed digital graffiti on the website of TV gossip show Sálvame.

The miscreants took advantage of either system or configuration errors before modifying content on targeted sites, according to Spanish security firm Panda.

Two members of the KO defacement crew are minors, but two are slightly older and face possible charges over the theft of personal data of 120,000 users held on the Sálvame site. "This fact would have made the group of Computer Crimes speed up their arrest in order to prevent them from putting up the file for sale," Panda notes in a blog posting on the arrests. ®