Cyber security investigators have revealed the identity of the alleged mastermind of the feared hacker group “Lapsus$” who is believed to be a 16-year-old British boy who lives with his mother in Oxford, southern England.
This young and talented teenager, better known by the nicknames “White” or “Breshbys”, is said to have advanced hacking skills to the point that investigators initially thought they were monitoring the activity of a computer program, American media reports Bloomberg.
Wanted for a series of “hacking” against large companies such as Microsoft, Samsung or Ubisoft, the hacker group was first created in Great Britain and South America, before attacking multinational companies in telecommunications, media, retail and even some government organizations.
same operating mode
According to investigators, the group carried out a “large-scale campaign of extortion” against several organizations, always using the same method of action: hacking security systems (with the help of several employees within the companies that were attacked), stealing sensitive data, and demanding ransoms not to be publicly disclosed on the Internet.
Despite their talent, the young hackers would have faced significant risks such as “announcing their attacks on social networks, or revealing their intent to buy identifiers from employees of targeted companies,” the investigators said. Overzealous and “poor operational security” cost them dearly, as investigators were able to link cyber attacks with each other, and identify the perpetrators, not without the help of rival hackers, who privately published their personal information on the Internet. Lapsus$ group leader (nickname, first name, address, etc.).
However, there is still no official evidence of the responsibility of the young teenager, nor of his possible motive. He has never been formally charged by the courts, at least for the time being. The group has not been affected much by the revelations either as they recently said on social media that “some of our members have vacations until March 30, 2022, we may be quiet for a while, thanks for understanding, we will try to post more information as soon as possible.”
