A new hacker gang has been stealing code from some of the world’s biggest tech companies and dumping it all over the internet.
The culprit is LAPSUS$, a criminal outfit whose trademark is taking on the biggest, shiniest target it can find, breaching it, then slyly bragging about the conquest. The gang initially seemed like a ransomware attackers to researchers, but it doesn’t use encrypting malware, the programs that lock users out of their own systems in ransomware strikes. Instead, LAPSUS$ boosts victims’ data, then threatens to dump it if the price is not paid.
While it’s not totally clear who is involved in the gang, researchers told Bloomberg that one of its main hackers may be a 16-year-old boy living with his mom in England.
As more information comes in about the gang itself, here’s a run-through of the biggest targets LAPSUS$ has hacked so far.
