British cops investigating a cyber-crime group have made a string of arrests.
Though City of London Police gave few details on Thursday, officers are said to be probing the notorious extortionware gang Lapsus$, and have detained and released seven people aged 16 to 21.
In a statement, the force said: “Seven people between the ages of 16 and 21 have been arrested in connection with an investigation into a hacking group. They have all been released under investigation. Our inquiries remain ongoing.”
Among them is a 16-year-old boy from Oxford who has been accused of being one of the crew’s leaders, the BBC reported. He cannot be identified for legal reasons.
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Bloomberg first reported the boy’s alleged involvement with the extortion gang on Wednesday, and claims by security researchers that he was the crew’s mastermind. Lapsus$ is the devil-may-care team of miscreants that have broken into major firms including Microsoft, Samsung, Vodafone, and Okta.
It is said the boy netted about $14m in Bitcoin from his online life, and was lately doxxed – which means he had his personal info leaked online – after an apparent falling out with his business partners.
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The cyber-crime ring rose to fame in recent months for its brash tactics and its propensity to brag about its exploits on Telegram. Its standard operating procedure is to infiltrate a big target’s network, steal sensitive internal data, make demands to prevent the public release of this material – and usually release some of it anyway.
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In February, however, the criminals sneaked into Nvidia‘s networks and stole one terabyte of data including employee credentials and proprietary information, and dumped some of it online.
Days later Lapsus$ said it had raided Samsung and stole 190GB of internal files including some Galaxy device source code.
The criminal group followed that up by claiming it was responsible for a cybersecurity incident at gaming giant Ubisoft.
‘Motivated by theft and destruction’
Microsoft, in its days-late confirmation that Lapsus$, which the Windows giant calls DEV-0537, did indeed steal some of its source code, and said the crime group seems to be “motivated by theft and destruction.”
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Source: British cops arrest seven in Lapsus$ crime gang probe • The Register
Robin Edgar
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