Metropolitan Police has reportedly arrested seven teenagers in the UK connected to Lapsus$, the extortionist cyber-crime group that recently hacked Microsoft. According to the BBC, the gang’s suspected ringleader is a 16-year-old boy from Oxford who has allegedly made $14 million by extorting the likes of Nvidia and Ubisoft.
The school-aged swindler, who goes by the online monikers “White” or “Breachbase”, was seemingly doxxed after a disagreement with business partners. While the teen is situated in Oxford, England and attends a special educational school in the area, it’s believed that his cybercrime counterparts are based in South America.
The tech-savvy 16-year-old has allegedly made 300 bitcoin (roughly $13 million) through his precarious pastime, but his parents say they were unaware of his actions until recently. The boy’s father also told the BBC that he thought he was “playing video games”, but now says he’ll “try to stop him from going on computers.”
The other six suspected members of Lapsus$ are said to be between the age of 16-21, and the City of London Police says they’ve been released under investigation. While it seems like the Met has made a major breakthrough in thwarting the gang’s operations, the fact Lapsus$ comprises international members means the group is still very much at large.
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On Wednesday, Microsoft confirmed that Lapsus$ had gained “limited access” to one of its Azure dev accounts. The tech giant also reassured customers that their data and security isn’t at risk, as the company doesn’t rely on “secrecy of code as a security measure.” The group previous attempted to blackmail Nvidia into unlocking the hash rate of its best graphics cards, but it’s not clear whether source files for Cortana and Bing possess any extortion value.