Security News > 2022 > July > Spanish Police Arrest 2 Nuclear Power Workers for Cyberattacking the Radiation Alert System

Spanish law enforcement officials have announced the arrest of two individuals in connection with a cyberattack on the country's radioactivity alert network, 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 and used to monitor excessive radiation levels across the country.

"The two detainees, former workers, attacked the computer system and caused the connection of the sensors to fail, reducing their detection capacity even in the environment of nuclear power plants," the Policía Nacional said.

The law enforcement probe, dubbed Operation GAMMA, commenced in June 2021 in the aftermath of an attack perpetrated against the RAR network, which is a mesh of 800 gamma radiation detection sensors deployed in various parts of the country to detect surges in radioactivity levels.

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."

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