Major tech companies including Nvidia, Samsung, and Microsoft were recently hit by ransomware attacks over the past month. The hacker group called Lapsus$ stole hundreds of GBs of source code and threatened to release it to the public if their demands were not met.
Cybersecurity researchers have now traced these attacks to a 16-year-old living with his mother near Oxford, England. The researchers also identified seven other accounts related to the hacker group, including another teenager residing in Brazil. However, they believe the British teenager was the mastermind behind all the attacks.
Credit goes to rival hackers who apparently shared the teenager’s details online including all information about his parents. The researchers connected this information with forensic details of the hack as well as public information.
Bloomberg did not share any of the personal details, but revealed that the hacker goes by the alias “White” or breachbase”. White is so skilled and so fast at what he does that the researchers thought the attacks were automated at first.
The Lapsus$ hacker group does not appear to be interested in just money, but also notoriety. The attackers never cover their tracks and even announce the hacks on social media. They publicly call for employees willing to sell their company logins and also join their victim’s Zoom calls to taunt the people responding to their attacks.
Microsoft said that Lapsus$ started off by attacking organizations in the UK and South America, but eventually moved on to major tech companies, government agencies, telecoms, and health sector companies.
