Two teenagers arrested in the UK last week in relation to the LAPSUS$ hacking group have now been charged with multiple cyber-offenses. The charges follow successful hacks of Nvidia, Samsung, Okta, and Microsoft by the group.
As the BBC reports, a 16- and 17-year-old have been charged with:
- Three counts of unauthorized access to a computer with intent to impair the reliability of data
- One count of fraud by false representation
- One count of unauthorized access to a computer with intent to hinder access to data
The 16-year-old faces a further charge of causing a computer to perform a function to secure unauthorized access to a program. Due to their age, neither teenager is being named publicly. However, full details of the 16-year-old, who is thought to be the mastermind behind the group, have been shared online by other hackers.
The arrests didn’t seem to matter to LAPSUS$, and it’s unlikely losing two members will either. Earlier this week, the group started circulating an archive as a torrent file claiming it contains 73GB of data stolen from software services company Globant. Globant employees over 25,000 people and counts Facebook, DHL, and C-Span as customers.
The two teenagers will remain in police custody while they await trial. It’s currently unknown what form the punishment could take if they are found guilty, but it will ultimately come down to how cooperative they are with the ongoing investigation combined with their young age.
Under the UK’s Computer Misuse Act, there is currently no official guidelines for sentencing. However, examples of sentences handed down for previous cases vary between several months to years of imprisonment, either in prison or a young offender institute, combined with fines of up to $300,000.
