7 Teen Hackers Arrested in London, Their Targets Include Microsoft

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7 Teen Hackers Arrested in London, Their Targets Include Microsoft


British police have arrested seven people following a series of hacks by hacking group Lapsus$. The hacker group targeted large companies including Okta Inc (OKTA.O) and Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), City of London Police said on Thursday.

San Francisco-based Okta Inc. is an authentication service provider. Some of the biggest companies in the world use their services.

Okta said Tuesday that it had been attacked by hackers and some customers may be affected.

"City of London Police have launched an investigation into members of the hacking group," Detective Inspector Michael O'Sullivan said in an emailed statement.

A ransom-seeking gang posted a series of screenshots of Okta's internal communications on their Telegram channel last Monday night.


"Seven youths aged 16 and 21 have been arrested in connection with this investigation. All have been released under investigation," O'Sullivan said.

News of the digital breach has plunged Okta's stake by around 11 percent amid criticism of the digital authentication company's slow response to the intrusion.

Okta shares traded down 4.8% on Thursday.

City of London Police did not directly mention Lapsus$ in their statement. A spokesman said none of the seven people arrested had been formally charged, pending an investigation.

WHO'S LAPSUS$?

Last month, Lapsus$ leaked proprietary information on US chipmaker Nvidia Corp NVDA.O to the Web.


The group recently admitted to leaking source code from several big tech companies, including Microsoft, which on Tuesday confirmed that one of its accounts had been compromised.

Lapsus$ has not responded to repeated requests for comment on their Telegram channel and via email.

A teenager living near Oxford, England, is suspected of being behind some of the more significant attacks, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday.

Contacted by phone, the father of the teenager, who cannot be named because he is a minor, declined to comment.

Reuters confirmed that cybersecurity researchers investigating Lapsus$ believed the teenager was involved in the group, according to three people familiar with the matter.

In a blog post on Thursday, Unit 42, a research team at Palo Alto Networks, described Lapsus$ as an "assault group" motivated by fame rather than financial gain.

Unlike other groups, they do not rely on the spread of ransomware -malicious software to encrypt their victims' networks, a hallmark of digital extortion - and instead manually dump the trash on their target networks.

Together with Unit 221b, a separate security consultancy, the Palo Alto researchers said they had identified the "main actors" behind Lapsus$ in 2021 and had "assisted law enforcement in their efforts to prosecute this group".


"The juveniles we identified as controlling Lapsus$ were instrumental," Allison Nixon, lead researcher at Unit 221b, told Reuters.

"Not just for their leadership role, but for the vital intelligence they must have in the other members".


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