Four Suspected Members of the Hacker Collective 'Anonymous' Arrested in Spain

MADRID (The Blaze/AP) -- Police say they have arrested four suspected hackers allied to the loose-knit Anonymous movement in connection with attacks on Spanish political party websites.

A National Police statement said two servers used by the group in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic have been blocked.

It said the four included the alleged manager of Anonymous' computer operations in Spain and Latin America, who was identified only by his initials and the aliases "Thunder" and "Pacotron."

The four are suspected of defacing websites, carrying out distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and publishing data on police assigned to the royal palace and the premier's office online.

Tuesday's statement said the arrests were part of an Interpol operation.

Anonymous members have also taken credit recently for DDoS attacks on several federal and local government websites in the United States as well, including the CIA, Alabama government, the Boston Police Department and a Federal Trade Commission site, to name a few.

Update: Later reports revealed that up to 25 Anonymous members from four countries had been arrested as part of this operation. The international police agency said in a statement that the arrests in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain were carried out by national law enforcement officers working under the support of Interpol's Latin American Working Group of Experts on Information Technology Crime.

The suspects, aged between 17 and 40, are suspected of planning coordinated cyberattacks against institutions including Colombia's defense ministry and presidential websites, Chile's Endesa electricity company and national library, as well as other targets.