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Melchor Sáiz-Pardo
Madrid
Wednesday, 5 February 2025, 10:27
Guardia Civil and National Police officers in Spain have arrested probably the most active and dangerous hacker in recent years. 'Natohub', a young man of just 18, was arrested on Tuesday at his home in the Alicante town of Calpe, after months of keeping the cybercrime specialists of Spanish and international security forces in check with a long list of cyberattacks on "strategic organisations" around the world.
'Natohub', among other exploits, was the hacker who, with one of his attacks last December, got hold of the users and emails of some 180,000 members of the Civil Guard, Armed Forces and Ministry of Defence personnel. This data was then offered for sale on a well-known portal for cybercriminals.
'Natohub' basically managed to breach the Ministry of Defence's systems to break into the ministry's 'virtual campus', where civil servants enter their data to participate in the department's academic training.
Following the leak of the Guardia Civil's database, the OCU central operational unit of the forces joined the investigations that the General Commissariat of the National Police had already opened into the individual for the theft of a Nato database two years ago.
The hacker, after collaborating with the Guardia Civil investigations, has been released after being placed at the disposal of the court number 1 of Alicante, which only withdrew his passport as a precautionary measure. His mother, a high school teacher, paid bail for her son, who was formally charged with crimes of discovery and disclosure of secrets, illegal access to computer systems, computer damage and money laundering.
This Operation Abbadon-Theatre and the collaboration of the detainee have enabled multiple attacks on the computer services of national and international companies and entities to be cleared up. The Ministry of the Interior also considers the arrested man to be the author of attacks against: the Fábrica Nacional de Moneda y Timbre; Servicio Público de Empleo Estatal; Ministry of Education, Vocational Training and Sports; different Spanish universities; the United States Army; Dirección General de Tráfico; Generalitat Valenciana regional government; the United Nations; the International Civil Aviation Organisation; and the Ministry of Defence.
In the search of his home, a mass of computer material was seized and is being analysed by specialists. In addition, the detainee had more than 50 cryptocurrency accounts with different types of cryptoassets, "a significant fact of the extensive knowledge that the arrested person has of the blockchain world", according to investigators this Wednesday.
"The arrested young man, with a deep knowledge of computers, had managed to set up a complex technological network through the use of anonymous messaging and browsing applications through which he had managed to hide his trail and make it difficult to identify him," added the officers in charge of this operation, in which the National Cryptologic Centre (CCN) of the National Intelligence Centre (CNI), Europol and the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) of the United States were also involved.
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