Police Shut Down 100 Servers Tied to Russian NoName057(16), Arrest 2

In a coordinated operation this week, law enforcement from a dozen countries gathered together in an attempt to dismantle the infrastructure of the pro-Russian hacking group known as NoName057(16). The operation, named Eastwood, was led by Europol and Eurojust and included action across Europe and North America.

NoName057(16) has been known for flooding websites with traffic in politically motivated distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Their usual targets have ranged from Ukrainian government platforms to critical websites in NATO countries that support Ukraine.

While many of their attackers were disruptive, they rarely caused long-lasting damage due to quick mitigation from targeted organisations. What’s noteworthy is that this group didn’t rely on elite hackers with advanced techniques. Instead, its strength came from numbers. Investigators found more than 4,000 people involved, many of them Russian-speaking with limited technical skills.

The group relied heavily on automation tools and “gamified tactics ...