Tag: Spain

Turkey proud of naming Cakir as Portugal v Spain referee

Euro semi-final referee gives Turks reason to smile

Missing out on Euro 2012 was painful for soccer-mad Turkey but having a Turkish referee at the finals has helped restore some pride to a country still smarting from match-fixing allegations and high-profile arrests.

Cuneyt Cakir, a 35-year-old Istanbul native who runs an insurance branch office, is the youngest referee at the tournament and will take charge of the semi-final between Spain and Portugal in Donetsk on Wednesday.

“Cuneyt Cakir… makes us Turks smile once again through his appointment to blow his whistle at the Euro semi-final,” newspaper Milliyet wrote this week.

Hurriyet newspaper said on Wednesday the Iberian clash would resemble Spain’s El Clasico and was a great honor for Cakir.

Cakir, whose father was a referee, regularly officiates at the notoriously volatile derbies between the three major Istanbul clubs.

Turkey, semi-finalists at Euro 2008, lost to Croatia in a playoff for the Euro 2012 finals after finishing second behind Germany in their qualifying group.

However, Germany playmaker Mesut Ozil, who was born in Gelsenkirchen but whose family hail from Turkey, is another favorite with the Turkish public.

[…]

Ahram online sports

June 28, 2012
Anonymous hacker group members arrested in all over Europe

Police in Italy and Switzerland searched more than 30 apartments as part of an investigation into online activist collective “Anonymous,” amid a growing global law-enforcement crackdown on high-profile computer attacks claimed by the group’s followers.

The move is the latest enforcement activity in a probe that since December has netted more than 40 arrests of individuals authorities in the U.K., Netherlands, Spain and Turkey have linked to Anonymous.

In the U.S., the Federal Bureau of Investigation is continuing a probe that has involved dozens of searches over recent months.

That includes the raid last week of the home of a Hamilton, Ohio, man believed to have links to an Anonymous splinter group called LulzSec.

Italian police said they suspect some 20 people, five of whom are ages 16 or 17, are behind so-called denial-of-service attacks, in which websites are bombarded with data with the aim of knocking them offline.

The searches conducted on Tuesday included the home of someone the police identified as a leader of Anonymous’s Italian cell, a 26-year-old man who goes by the nickname “Phre” and lives in Switzerland.

According to Italian authorities, the attacks targeted the websites of the Italian Parliament and top companies including Enel SpA, ENI SpA and Mediaset SpA, the country’s largest commercial broadcaster, which is owned by Silvio Berlusconi. No arrests were made.

Anonymous grew out of an online message forum formed in 2003 called 4chan, a popular destination with hackers and gamers.

It entered the spotlight late last year, claiming cyberattacks against companies and individuals the group said tried to impede the work of document-sharing website WikiLeaks. That included MasterCard Inc. and Visa Inc.

Over recent months, followers of Anonymous and LulzSec—which takes its name from Internet slang for laughter—have claimed responsibility for a number of denial-of-service attacks and computer breaches of a number of high-profile targets, ranging from corporations like Sony Corp. to the FBI and other government organizations.

British police, who are cooperating with the FBI, have arrested seven individuals this year. That includes 19-year old Ryan Cleary, who had been a prominent figure in Anonymous and then LulzSec.

U.K. prosecutors late last month charged him with five computer-related offenses.

Authorities allege he infected computers in order to form a computer network, called a botnet, which he then used to launch online attacks against websites including that of the U.K. Serious Organised Crime Agency.

Essex-based Mr. Cleary, who is out on bail, is cooperating with police, his lawyer has said. The other six individuals arrested in the U.K. have been released on bail and haven’t been charged.

The Wall Street Journal

July 20, 2011
Spain arrests Anonymous “Hactivists” group members over Turkey attack

Spanish police arrest 3 suspected Anonymous “hactivists”

* Suspects accused of attacking websites of Sony, banks

* Spanish police say further arrests may follow (Recasts making clear police did not link to big PlayStation attacks; adds comment from Anonymous, details throughout, BOSTON dateline, byline)

By Iciar Paneda and Jim Finkle

MADRID/BOSTON, June 10 (Reuters) – Spanish police arrested three men suspected to be members of the hacker group Anonymous on Friday, charging them with organizing cyber attacks against the websites of Sony Corp (6758.T), banks and governments — but not the recent massive hacking of PlayStation gamers.

Anonymous responded by threatening to retaliate for the arrests: “We are Legion, so EXPECT US,” the group said on its official Twitter feed.

Spanish police alleged the three “hacktivists” helped organize an attack that temporarily shuttered access to some Sony websites. They were not linked to two massive cyber attacks against Sony’s Playstation Network that resulted in the theft of information from more than 100 million customers.

Police also accused the men of launching cyber assaults on Spanish banks BBVA (BBVA.MC) and Bankia, and Italian energy group Enel SpA (ENEI.MI).

The arrests are the first in Spain against alleged members of Anonymous, following the detention of others in the United States and Britain. Police told Reuters all three men were Spanish and in their 30s. One worked in the merchant navy.

Anonymous is a loose grouping of self-proclaimed hactivists who frequently try to shut down the websites of businesses and other organizations that it opposes.

Its members describe themselves as Internet freedom fighters and have previously brought down websites of the Church of Scientology, as well as Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), MasterCard Inc (MA.N) and others they saw as hostile to WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.

Anonymous members cripple websites by overwhelming them with traffic in what is commonly known as “denial of service” attacks. The group publicizes these campaigns on the Web, giving supporters the information to attack a targeted site.

The group is currently sponsoring attacks to shut down Turkish government websites in a protest against Internet censorship. Attempts to reach the group by email were not immediately successful.

To date, the group has not been linked to crimes for financial profit.

<^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Sony PlayStation recovery delayed in Asia [ID:nL3E7GV08P]

Turkey comes under attack from Anonymous [ID:nLDE75825A]

In the chatroom with the cyber guerillas [ID:nLDE70I121]

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Spanish police said the accused, who were arrested in Almeria, Barcelona and Alicante, were guilty of coordinated computer hacking attacks from a server set up in a house in Gijon in the north of Spain.

The Spanish police said members of Anonymous, known for wearing Guy Fawkes masks made popular by the graphic novel “V for Vendetta,” had also hacked government sites in Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Iran, Chile, Colombia and New Zealand.

“They are structured in independent cells and make thousands of simultaneous attacks using infected ‘zombie’ computers worldwide. This is why NATO considers them a threat to the military alliance,” the police said in a statement.

“They are even capable of collapsing a country’s administrative structure.”

The police did not rule out further arrests.

Sony PlayStation spokesman Dan Race declined to comment on the arrests on Friday. (Additional reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington and Liana B. Baker in New York; Writing by Nigel Davies and Georgina Prodhan;

Reuters

June 11, 2011
Spanish Suspected Bomb Kills Two Police Officers in Majorca

By Emma Ross-Thomas

July 30 (Bloomberg) — A suspected bomb killed two Civil Guards in Majorca, Spain, an official at the police force’s Madrid office said.

“We don’t know if it was a car bomb or a backpack-bomb,” the official, who declined to be named in line with policy, said today in a phone interview.

Yesterday, a bomb packed into a van exploded outside the family quarters of a police barracks in the northern Spanish city of Burgos, in an attack that the government blamed on the terrorist group ETA. Majorca is a major tourist destination for European visitors and is also where Spain’s royal family goes on holiday.

ETA, whose initials in the Basque language stand for Euskadi ta Askatasuna, or Basque Homeland and Freedom, has been blamed for the deaths of more than 800 people in a four-decade campaign for an independent nation spanning the seven Basque- speaking provinces of Spain and southwestern France.

Bloomberg

July 30, 2009