The Prosecutor's Office requests provisional detention for the 'hacker' who attacked the Judicial Neutral Point and charges him with revealing secrets

The young man, who declared this Monday before the National Court, would have had access to more than 500,000 bank accounts

MADRID, 3 Abr. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The prosecutor of the National Court Ana Noé has requested provisional detention for J.L.H.R., the young 'hacker' of Spanish nationality who is allegedly behind the cyberattack suffered last October 2022 at the Judicial Neutral Point (PNJ). She accuses him of a continuous crime of discovery and disclosure of secrets and bases the request for imprisonment on the risk of flight, the risk of destruction of evidence and the danger of criminal repetition.

The young man, who has agreed to testify this Monday before the judge of the National Court José Luis Calama, would have managed to access the PNJ, which is the communication system managed by the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) that allows centralizing and transferring petitions of information between the judicial bodies and the Tax Agency, the Police or the National Institute of Social Security.

Legal sources consulted by Europa Press confirm that he has been made available to the judge after being arrested in an operation by the General Information Commissioner. It is estimated that he would have had access to more than 500,000 bank accounts through this access to the Judicial Neutral Point.

It was on October 20 when Calama agreed to initiate preliminary proceedings as a result of a complaint filed by the governing body of judges warning of the cyberattack, which could have affected personal data of taxpayers deposited in databases. Data from the Tax Agency.

As first steps, the judge decreed the secrecy of the proceedings and requested a series of reports from the Tax Agency and the National Cryptological Center on the scope of the denounced facts. From the National Court they consider that the facts could constitute a crime against a high organism of the nation and, without prejudice to further qualification, of the crime of discovery and disclosure of secrets.

The Council itself reported the attack at the time, which would have been detected in the second half of October 2022. "From that moment, cybersecurity measures were adopted to contain and neutralize computer attacks of this type," explained the CGPJ in a statement.

The governing body of the judges indicated in it that the Judicial Neutral Point was "used by the attackers to access other public institutions" and stressed that in the attack "no data related to judicial proceedings or other information in power of the courts and tribunals.

From the Council they explained that, once the cyberattack was detected, the facts were brought to the attention of the Cybersecurity Operations Center of the General State Administration and its Public Bodies (COCS), as well as the National Cryptological Center (CCN-CERT).

According to the CGPJ, after said notification --and in coordination with both centers-- "the corresponding investigative and mitigating measures" were adopted. Likewise, the Council notified the Spanish Agency for Data Protection (AEPD) and the Directorate of Supervision and Control of Data Protection of the governing body of the judges.