Forced to protect themselves against numerous cyberattacks, large companies linked to digital and new technologies must now face up to a group of troublemaking teenagers. Explanations.
They make chaos reign
Capable of destabilizing a country, hacker groups also have another preferred prey: large groups in the digital world and new technologies. The latter call on cybersecurity experts to ensure that their data is not stolen.
Despite all the precautions taken, it sometimes happens that clever little guys manage to slip through the cracks and commit their misdeeds. Recently, several large companies, including Microsoft, Ubisoft, Nvidia and Samsung, suffered a gigantic cyber-attack. Thus, for example, Nvidia had announced that it had stolen no less than 1 TB of data, among which was data deemed “sensitive”, relating to the design of their graphics cards. As for Microsoft, no less than 90% of the Bing Maps source code, and 45% of the Bing and Cortana code have been stolen.as well as the source code of 250 projects belonging to the company created by Bill Gates.
Behind all these cyber attacks is a new group of hackers that terrifies big business. This is the LAPSUS$ group. Having started their crimes at the end of 2021, the group had attacked the Brazilian Ministry of Health, as well as many Portuguese, Brazilian and more generally South American companies. Yes LAPSUS$ announces that it is only motivated by money, some of its claims seem to demonstrate, on the contrary, that its members are driven by somewhat more ideological principles, although they are not as assertive as those of other hacker groups. Thereby, the group asked, among others, Nvidia, that the company deactivate on their graphics cards the system complicating the mining of cryptocurrencies.
But who is behind LAPSUS$? According to the American media Bloomberg, the investigators in charge of the investigation traced the trail of at least two teenagers. The first, a 16-year-old British boy still living with his mother, is believed to be responsible for most of the trespassing. The second teenager would be Brazilian. Investigators believe thatthere would be seven other band membersand think they have found the trace of one of them, without however having communicated the slightest information about him.
Several factors worry companies and investigators. First, according to Bloomberg, the prime suspect (the young Briton) is said to be so skilled that investigators initially believed the activity they were observing was automated. Next, very active on Telegram, hackers make their community vote on the data to be revealed. So they shared a 9 GB (37 GB once unzipped) .zip file of source codes for Microsoft projects.
Finally, in their cyber-attacks, the hackers succeeded in finding the personal data and passwords of the employees of certain large firms, and connect on Zoom calls to taunt employees tasked with cleaning up hacks. If you liked this article, don’t hesitate to take a look at this article, in which we come back to this ultra-efficient hacker who got caught because of a simple detail…