London police arrest seven people over Lapsus$ hacks

Authorities are quickly cracking down on the Lapsus$ hacking group that allegedly compromised Microsoft and Okta. BBC News reports City of London Police have arrested seven people aged 16 to 21 over connections to Lapsus$. The police didn’t name the older people facing charges, but said they’d been released “under investigation.”

More details appear to have surfaced around one of the leaders. A 16-year-old Oxford boy known as “Breachbase” or “White” has supposedly made the equivalent of $14 million in Bitcoin up to this point, and was apparently outed after business partners doxxed him following a dispute. Researchers have been following him for almost a year, Bloomberg added. The teen made multiple mistakes that helped researches trail his activity across online accounts.

Lapsus$ claimed to have obtained 37GB in Microsoft source code for projects like Bing, Cortana and mobile apps. They also tried to compromise Okta’s customer support in January and posted images they said showed the company’s internal systems. Microsoft acknowledged that the hackers had limited access to its network, while Okta indicated there was no hostile action beyond the January incident.

The arrests won’t necessarily put a stop to Lapsus$ when the group is believed to call South America its home. They may chill the organization’s activity and rapidly growing buzz, though. Lapsus$ has quickly garnered attention due to major targets like Microsoft, and its Telegram channel now has 47,000 members — the busts won’t exactly encourage copycat attacks.