The European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation, or Eurojust, announced on Wednesday that law enforcement agencies had dismantled NoName057(16), a hacker group that had carried out numerous attacks against critical infrastructure, weapons manufacturers, energy companies, and government agencies.
According to Eurojust, a coordinated international operation conducted on July 15 with the participation of 12 countries, including the U.S., successfully took down the group’s botnet, which had used hundreds of servers around the world to carry out its attacks.
Germany and Spain have issued arrest warrants for seven suspected members of the group, including its leaders, who are believed to be in Russia, Reuters reports. Investigators in multiple countries also carried out 24 searches at locations linked to volunteers recruited by NoName members.
Eurojust and German prosecutors said the group had recruited more than 4,000 volunteers via Telegram, social media, and gaming and hacker forums to take part in DDoS campaigns.
According to Eurojust, NoName057(16) carried out 14 cyberattacks in Germany alone, some of which lasted multiple days, and affected 230 organizations there, including weapons manufacturers. The group also launched attacks across Europe during election periods. In Sweden, government and banking websites were targeted; in Switzerland, attacks coincided with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s video address to parliament in June 2023, as well as with a peace summit on Ukraine in June 2024. One of the group’s most recent attacks took place during the NATO summit in the Netherlands in late June.