Arrested for endangering national security. Perhaps we could be talking about a movie, but the story is as real as life itself. We are talking about a cybercriminal who had managed to complete his task of hacking the DGT and other organizations, putting other important computer systems on edge. Among them, the communication group of Telecinco, Mediaset.
The hacker gained control of important organizations
The National Police has arrested a young minor in Madrid for attempting to hack different computer systems in our country, such as that of the DGT. The young man had been perpetrating various cyberattacks since 2020, until now he has finally been arrested.
And it is that, becoming a ‘hacker’ when they have not yet reached the age of majority is becoming more frequent every day. According to data from the INE, only during the past year in Spain there were 571 arrests of minors under 18 years of age for committing cybercrimes.
These figures constitute “the tip of an iceberg that is difficult to quantify”, as Panda cybersecurity has pointed out in a statement. The company warns of “many more cases of children who commit cybercrimes on a daily basis.” This is what we can see in this case, when this young man was able to gain access and control of important companies and organizations in Spain.
For the DGT hack I wanted to get driving licenses
What is known is that this detention is not exactly the first that falls on the minor. It has ended as the fourth time that this Spanish ‘hacker’ has been arrested, who is accused of having sneaked into the DGT systems in the past with hacking attempts, but also towards the National Police and multiple public and companies, including Mediaset or BiciMad (depending on the Municipal Transport Company of Madrid).
As confirmed by the Police, the arrest has occurred within an investigation into an alleged crime of diversion of capital through computer attacks. Other perpetrators would be involved in it, at least one other of whom would have also been arrested.
“The arrested person would have illegitimately accessed the servers of companies, both national and international and of all kinds, as well as regional and local Spanish public entities,” he adds. For one of his objectives, the boy had the intention of obtaining several driving licenses in his name without having taken any type of prior examination, neither theoretical nor practical.
Burst databases, alter the status of your orders…
Regarding this case, the National Police mentions how the young man managed to enter a bicycle rental service in Madrid. A service where his signature appeared on the totems. “The alleged author of the cyberattack recorded his authorship, through a message that could be read on the screens of the rental management devices located on public roads.”
Of all, and as something important to highlight, is that the National Police was already behind the young man. Even, he already tracked him down during the 2020 confinement and state of alarm for being close to bursting the database of a courier company. At that time, also detained, he was released.
Another of his criminal acts from a (long) list, is the one that managed to transfer and divert an amount of 1,600 euros from the accounts of a company to whose database. The end? alter the status of your orders from ‘pending payment’ to ‘paid’ in a single click.
He was very active. In fact, at the time that the agents responsible for the investigation arrested him, they also aborted the attack that the hacker was about to execute against a health application designed to prescribe prescriptions. In it, he had stolen personal data from his users, information considered protected, including private organizations that he also accessed, such as those of the Mediaset communication giant.
