It ’s official : a stripe of British teenagers bring off to hack some of the biggest companies on the planet last year , and they did it all using fairly basic hacking proficiency .
That news come via of late concludedcourt proceedingsin London , where panel fellow member have just convicted two teens of having been member of the notorious cybercrime gangLAPSUS$.
Throughout much of last twelvemonth , LAPSUS$ nurture a report for being a flakey , helter-skelter , and flashy criminal endeavour , with a taste for going after — and successfully pwning — liberal targets . Not quite a ransomware gang but far from being a bunch of inefficient playscript kiddies , the mathematical group hacked some of the biggest companies in the world during a months - farseeing spree that wreaked havoc throughout Silicon Valley .
Photo: Dmytro Tyshchenko (Shutterstock)
BBC News nowreportsthat Arion Kurtaj , 18 , is described as having been a key phallus of the group . Kurtaj , who has autism , is said to have conducted or serve conduct many of the crew ’s cyberattacks between late 2021 and early 2022 . Kurtaj ’s identity waspreviously leakedto the vane by a rival cybercrime faction , but , due to his age , authority have n’t publicly identified him until now . Psychiatrists deem Kurtaj not fit to stand trial run , so he did not appear in Margaret Court , the BBC writes .
Another autistic teenager , who is still underage and whose identity has thus not been released , was also found shamed by the court of having been a prominent gang member , BCC reports .
The notches on the gang ’s belt includedUber , Nvidia , Microsoft , Samsung , Ubisoft , Rockstar Games , andmany others . It was alsothought to be connectedto a number of bizarre data breach that used hacked police force enforcement e-mail account to bespeak data from ship’s company like Apple , Meta , and Snapchat .
Basic intrusion techniques outfox industry security standards
At many point , LAPSUS$ operated unconventionally — and boldly . Case in point : the teens are said to have hacked some of their cock-a-hoop target — including Rockstar Games , Uber , and Nvidia — while they were out on bail for their late hack crimes . In some fount , the gang did n’t even attempt to ransom the data it had stolen ; instead , it would just spill the stolen corporal secrets all over the internet , operating less like a savvy criminal group and more like a band of information terrorist .
More than anything , the LAPSUS$ affair seems to have highlighted just how sluttish it is for cybercriminals to evade most corporations ’ security measures . In cosmopolitan , Kurtaj and his entourage seem to have slipped past the defense of massive pot with relative ease . A recently publishedreportfrom the Department of Homeland Security ’s Cyber Safety Review Board has provide additional insights on LAPSUS$ ’ modus operandi , further confirming the gang ’s economic consumption of simplistic hacking proficiency to move big yields . The report notes :
“ Lapsus$ seemed to run at various times for notoriety , financial gain , or entertainment , and blended a variety of techniques , some more complex than others , with jiffy of creative thinking … It diffuse corporate networks , slip source code , take payments while seldom adopt up , deposit political content in shadowy online forums , and fleetly moved on to its next target . The cyberattacks were not the work of a nation - state histrion , nor did they always call for especially complex or advanced tooling or methods . Yet the attacks were systematically effective against some of the most well - resourced and well - defended party in the human race . ”
In short : cybersecurity provider clearly need to step up their game . If a bunch of bored high schoolers can jaw the Fortune 500 bunch ’s digital defenses this easily , we are all in some serious trouble .
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