Spanish police have arrested three suspects for their alleged involvement in data breach against Catalan police Mossos D’Esquadra server in 2016. Germany-based malware developer/vendors FinFisher in 2014 and Italy-based Hacking Team back in 2015.
Some reports suggest that among the arrested are the hacker “Phineas Fisher” aka “Hack Back!” and “@GammaGroupPR,” the online Robin Hood of the Internet who gained popularity for hacks as mentioned above and also for stealing around €10,000 (about £8,000) Bitcoin and donating it to an anti-capitalist Kurdish group in Rojava.
The Associated Press reports that a spokesman for Catalonia’s regional police Mossos d’Esquadra revealed that one woman and two men were arrested for hacking the servers of Sindicat De Mossos d’Esquadra (SME) and leaking personal information around 5000 police officers. The suspects are from Barcelona and Salamanca.
However, MotherBoard Vice reports that “Phineas Fisher” is still at large. In an email conversation, the hacker told a Vice contact that he is aware of the arrests, but claims that police has arrested wrong people.
“I think the Mossos just arrested some people that retweeted the link to their personal info, or maybe just arrested some activity/anarchisty people to pretend they are doing something,” Phineas Fisher said in the mail forwarded to Vice.
Vice also reported that the conversation between them and Phineas Fisher took place on the same email address which was being used by the hacker for the past few months. It must be noted that Vice could not confirm if the person who wrote the email is Phineas Fisher or someone having access to the email previously used by Phineas Fisher.
Last month, the same hacker defaced the official website of The Bilderberg Group. The defacement was carried out against the Group meeting urging the government to work for humanity rather than personal interests. In the hacks of Gamma Group and Hacking Team two years ago, the hacker leaked source code, support history, pricing and other sensitive data.
In 2015’s Italian surveillance company Hacking Team hack, the hacker breached its servers and leaked a 500 GB of customer files, financial documents, internal emails and contracts on the Internet for public download. The breach destroyed Hacking Team business worldwide because leaked documents exposed that the company was selling surveillance tools to governments and dictators. Since then, Hacking Team’s license has been canceled.
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