The Police force of London city who has been investigating the Lapsus$ malicious group announced on Friday that it has charged two of the seven teenagers, a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old for their illegal connections to the LAPSUS$ data extortion group.
The two teenagers have been charged with unauthorized access to a computer with the intention to impair the reliability of data, fraud by false representation, and unauthorized access to a computer with the intention to hinder access to data, the police force stated.
According to a member of the police, charges come when the Police moved to catch seven suspected LAPSUS$ group members aged between 16 and 21 on March 25.
“Both teenagers have been charged with: three counts of unauthorized access to a computer with intent to impair the reliability of data; one count of fraud by false representation and one count of unauthorized access to a computer with intent to hinder access to data,” Detective Inspector Michael O’Sullivan, from the City of London Police, said in a statement.
In a short span of a few months, the LAPSUS$ hacker group has gained infamy in the crowded digital extortion market for their hacking records including stealing and publishing the source code of multiple top-tier technology companies on their Telegram channel, which has more than 58,000 subscribers. It's worth noting that it has exceedingly high-level of access to some of the biggest companies in the world.
Data has shown that in the past few months, Lapsus$ has extracted data from various global giants, including Samsung, Nvidia, Microsoft, Vodafone, and Qualcomm, with the latest target being the Globant.
The group of hackers came into the spotlight after attacking Okta, a company that facilitates organizations with security services.
"In today's environment, threat actors favor using ransomware to encrypt data and systems and often extort victims for significant amounts of cryptocurrency in exchange for decryption keys, sometimes turning up the pressure with the threat of publishing stolen data…"
"…LAPSUS$, however, is unusual in its approach – for this group, notoriety most often appears to be the goal, rather than financial gain”, Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 team reported.