Hackers rusos exponen datos de cientos de policías y militares españoles

A 499-page document circulating online contains the names, photographs, and phone numbers of roughly a thousand Spanish police officers, Civil Guard members, military personnel, and at least one private investigator. The file carries a header in Russian reading "List of Spanish security forces," and intelligence services have attributed the breach to NoName057, a sprawling hacktivist collective aligned with Russian interests. Though the group operates across multiple nationalities—including Spanish and Italian members—its leadership and coordination appear rooted in Moscow's strategic objectives.

The exposed individuals span a wide range of roles and ranks. Among them are a sub-inspector assigned to the Special Operations Security Groups, officers working in citizen services units, soldiers from the Army, Civil Guard agents, security escorts, and a private investigator. Many of the profiles belong to recently graduated civil servants, which has led investigators to consider two competing theories about the breach's intent. The first suggests the attack was indiscriminate, designed primarily to instill fear among security personnel. The second proposes the list functions as a recruitment roster—potential targets for future radicalization or coercion by hostile actors.

NoName057 itself emerged in March 2022, in the immediate aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The group specializes in distributed denial-of-service attacks against NATO members and Ukraine's allies, including Spanish government agencies and critical infrastructure. In previous campaigns, they have targeted websites of the Interior Ministry and the national railway operator during electoral periods. Their stated mission aligns with Russian state interests, though the group maintains a veneer of independent hacktivist identity.

Behind the data compilation stands a figure Spanish authorities have been pursuing for over a year. Enrique Arias Gil, a 38-year-old Madrid-based teacher, is wanted by Spain's National Court on charges of computer damage with terrorist intent, apology for terrorism, and membership in a criminal organization. Intelligence sources identify him as the user known as "desinformador ruso"—the Russian disinformer—and credit him with systematizing the collection of sensitive information about Spain's critical infrastructure and security personnel. Arias Gil currently resides in Russia under state protection, according to police investigations, and appears on Europol's most-wanted list.

The Spanish National Police's Information General Commissariat and the National Intelligence Center have spent months mapping the architecture of pro-Russian hacking groups operating against European and NATO targets. Their work has revealed that these organizations, long assumed to operate as autonomous collectives, actually answer to a single Russian state entity: the Center for the Protection of Youth and Childhood. This body was created and funded directly by Vladimir Putin's government.

Two major operations have brought this structure into focus. The first occurred last year, when the Information General Commissariat coordinated a complex international operation involving ten European police forces and the United States. The effort successfully disrupted NoName057's infrastructure across twelve countries, blocking more than one hundred servers. In Spain alone, authorities blocked access to forty-two servers and recovered data from twenty-five others, deleting information from eight additional systems. Police conducted three raids in Madrid, one in Barcelona, and another in Zaragoza, and interrogated five individuals.

The second breakthrough came in March of this year, when Spanish police arrested a 34-year-old Italian national in Palencia. Authorities accuse him of coordinating the group's attacks within Spain. These operations suggest that while NoName057 maintains a distributed structure, its command and control ultimately traces back to Moscow—and that Spain's security apparatus is beginning to map those connections with precision.