{"id":21562,"date":"2022-03-24T21:15:08","date_gmt":"2022-03-25T01:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=21562"},"modified":"2022-03-24T21:15:08","modified_gmt":"2022-03-25T01:15:08","slug":"lapsus-oxford-teen-accused-of-being-multi-millionaire-cyber-criminal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2022\/03\/24\/lapsus-oxford-teen-accused-of-being-multi-millionaire-cyber-criminal\/","title":{"rendered":"Lapsus$: Oxford teen accused of being multi-millionaire cyber-criminal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A 16-year-old from Oxford has been accused of being one of the leaders of cyber-crime gang Lapsus$.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The teenager, who is alleged to have amassed a $14m (\u00a310.6m) fortune from hacking, has been named by rival hackers and researchers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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City of London Police say they have arrested seven teenagers in relation to the gang but will not say if he is one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The boy’s father told the BBC his family was concerned and was trying to keep him away from his computers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Under his online moniker “White” or “Breachbase” the teenager, who has autism, is said to be behind the prolific Lapsus$ hacker crew, which is believed to be based in South America.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Lapsus$ is relatively new but has become one of the most talked about and feared hacker cyber-crime gangs, after successfully breaching major firms like Microsoft and then bragging about it online.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The teenager, who can’t be named for legal reasons, attends a special educational school in Oxford.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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City of London Police 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.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Playing online games<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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The boy’s father told the BBC: “I had never heard about any of this until recently. He’s never talked about any hacking, but he is very good on computers and spends a lot of time on the computer. I always thought he was playing games.”<\/p>\n

\"Microsoft\"<\/a>
Microsoft is one of the victims of the Lapsus$ hacking group<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“We’re going to try to stop him from going on computers.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The BBC has also spoken to the boy’s mother, who did not want to comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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‘Doxxed’ online<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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“White” was outed – or “doxxed” – on a hacker website, after an apparent falling out with business partners.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The hackers revealed his name, address, and social media pictures.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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They also posted a biography of his hacking career, saying: “After a few years his net worth accumulated to well over 300BTC [close to $14m]\u2026 [he is] now is affiliated with a wannabe ransomware group known as ‘Lapsus$’, who has been extorting & ‘hacking’ several organisations.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As\u00a0first reported by Bloomberg,<\/a>\u00a0cyber-security researchers have been tracking “White” for nearly a year and have linked him to Lapsus$ and other hacking incidents.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“We’ve had his name since the middle of last year and we identified him before the doxxing,” said Allison Nixon, chief research officer at cyber-security investigation company Unit 221B.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“Unit 221B working with [cyber-security company] Palo Alto after identifying the actor, watched him on his exploits throughout 2021, periodically sending law enforcement a heads-up about the latest crimes.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mrs Nixon says researchers tracked him through a trail of activity linked through a nearly unbroken stream of the boy’s online accounts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“We did it by watching the post history of an account and seeing older posts provide contact information for the guy.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mrs Nixon says the trail was followed thanks to mistakes “White” made in failing to cover his tracks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Lapsus$ crew<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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The Lapsus$ cyber-extortion group has gained notoriety in a short space of time thanks to its high-profile targets and active presence on the messaging app Telegram. Its channel has grown to 47,000 subscribers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The last message was posted on the channel on Wednesday, with the group saying: “A few of our members has a vacation until 30\/3\/2022. We might be quiet for some times. Thanks for understand us – we will try to leak stuff ASAP.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Okta says hundreds of its customers were affected by the cyber-attack (Image: Reuters)<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Chris Morgan, from cyber-security company Digital Shadows, says Lapsus$ has risen in prominence in recent months “after targeting several enterprise technology companies, breaching significant amounts of data and posting on to their dedicated Telegram data leak channel”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“Little is known of the origins of the group, however, given that Lapsus$’s initial activity was directed towards several organisations in Brazil, some researchers have speculated that the group is based in South America,” Mr Morgan said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In a Wednesday\u00a0blog post, Microsoft said<\/a>\u00a0Lapsus$ had gained limited access to its system.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Security company Okta\u00a0admitted that it too had been hacked<\/a>\u00a0by the group, with consequences for hundreds of its clients.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A 16-year-old from Oxford has been accused of being one of the leaders of cyber-crime gang Lapsus$. The teenager, who is alleged to have amassed a $14m (\u00a310.6m) fortune from hacking, has been named by […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[6124,7572,4835,8396,7120,2936,8395,4610,6270],"class_list":{"0":"post-21562","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-uk","9":"tag-city-of-london-police","10":"tag-cyber-attacks","11":"tag-cyber-crime","12":"tag-cyber-extortion","13":"tag-cyber-security","14":"tag-hacking","15":"tag-lapsus","16":"tag-oxford","17":"tag-ransomware","18":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21562"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21566,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21562\/revisions\/21566"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}