Spanish law enforcement officials have announced the arrest of two individuals in connection with a cyberattack on the country’s radioactivity alert network (RAR), which took place between March and June 2021.
The act of sabotage is said to have disabled more than one-third of the sensors that are maintained by the Directorate-General for Civil Protection and Emergencies (DGPCE) and used to monitor excessive radiation levels across the country.
The reason for the attacks is unknown as yet.
In a post-mortem analysis shared by the agency, the intrusion was two-pronged, one which culminated in the unauthorized access to the control center’s computer system to delete a web application used to manage the RAR system.
A second component of the attack involved the targeting of more than 300 sensors over two months, “causing the failure of their connection with the control center and thus reducing the detection capacity of the network.”
The Policía Nacional said the arrests were the result of a year-long investigation and an exhaustive analysis of “all the communications of the sabotaged sensors.”
