The Europol and Eurojust agencies announced on Wednesday the dismantling of the group of hackers Prorusses Noname057 (16), responsible for multiple attacks aimed at Ukraine and its allies, targeting significant infrastructure in Europe in particular.
“During a day of action on July 15, the botnet, which used hundreds of servers around the world, was dismantled and several suspects were identified, whose main instigators residing in the Russian Federation,” the European agencies said in a statement.
A botnet is a network of pirated machines to carry out malicious operations.
The operation involved twelve countries and led to the arrest of two people, one in France and one in Spain, agencies said.
In addition, “Germany has issued six arrest mandates against suspects residing in the Russian Federation. Two of them are accused of being the main instigators of nonames’ activities057 (16),” said Europol, the European police coordination agency.
In total, the authorities issued seven arrest warrants, targeting six people based in Russia.
“Twenty-four searches were also made with affiliates of the group, one in France of which. Many evidence has been entered and are currently being analyzed,” the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
The group’s central server infrastructure has been discovered and online, he said.
IT pirates have proceeded by Deni of distributed service (DDOS), which consists in overloading websites and applications by targeted requests so that they are no longer accessible.
– 230 affected organizations –
The hackers group is responsible for multiple attacks aimed at significant infrastructure such as electricity suppliers and public transport in Europe, according to European agencies.
“Noname057 (16) has posted its support for the Russian Federation since the start of the war of aggression against Ukraine,” said Eurojust.
“The group has conducted several DDOS attacks against critical infrastructure during (political) events,” added the European Union for judicial cooperation in criminal matters.
According to European agencies, the group led 14 attacks in Germany, some having lasted several days and having affected around 230 organizations, including arms factories, electricity suppliers and government organizations.
“Organized DDOS campaigns can have serious consequences, especially on the feeling of population security. They must therefore be systematically continued and, if possible, prevented,” Holger Münch, German criminal police chief (BKA) said.
According to BKA, the main objective of attacks on German targets was “to draw the attention of the media and thus influence political or social decisions in Germany”.
Attacks were also carried out everywhere in Europe during the European elections.
In Sweden, websites of authorities and banks have been targeted, while in Switzerland, several attacks were carried out during a video message from the Ukrainian President in the European Parliament in June 2023 and at the Peace Summit for Ukraine in June 2024.
More recently, the Netherlands were targeted at the NATO summit at the end of June according to these same sources.
Posted on July 16 at 4:22 p.m.
