Spanish police have arrested two former government contractors, accusing them of attacking
In the spring of 2021, hackers hacked the systemradioactivity alerts, or RAR, which is a mesh network of 800 gamma radiation detection sensors located throughout the country. RAR, maintained by the Spanish General Directorate of Civil Defense and Emergencies (DGPCE), allows the government to monitor abnormally high levels of radioactivity at distributed geographic locations throughout the country. It was designed to protect against accidents such as the one at Chernobyl.
Cyberattacks that occurred between March and June2021, about a third of the sensors were disabled, leading to widespread network outages. Over the course of two months, the hackers "attacked more than 300 of the 800 existing sensors, disrupting their communications with the control center and thus reducing the network's detection ability," – said a National Police press release earlier this week.
It is not clear how the attackers managed tocover up violations, and whether the authorities knew about them at all. Whoever the culprit was also managed to access the DGPCE computer system and then tried to uninstall a web application that helps manage RAR, police say.
According to the government, two people were behind the attacks.former contractors who previously worked for RAR. The two men have not been identified, other than that they previously worked for the government. They were arrested after a year-long federal investigation.