Tag Archive for: Teen

London Police Arrest Teen Hacking Suspect, Have Not Confirmed GTA 6 Leak Link

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London police have arrested a 17-year-old on suspicion of hacking and some have speculated that it has something to do with the Grand Theft Auto VI leaks. Last weekend, 90+ videos of GTA 6 footage were posted on the GTAForums before it spread across the rest of the internet. Although some were doubtful it was real given Rockstar Games‘ immense secrecy, it became evident fairly quickly that the footage was authentic and this was the first look at the highly anticipated game. The leaker in question claimed to have been responsible for a hack on both Rockstar Games and Uber. Rockstar Games issued a statement on Monday morning confirming that it had a security breach and that the leaked footage was indeed real. Shortly after this, Uber reported that it was working with the FBI and US Department of Justice to find the hacker.

London City Police announced on Twitter on September 23rd that it had arrested a 17-year-old on suspicion of hacking as part of an investigation conducted by the National Crime Agency’s Cyber Crime Unit. The teen is currently in custody, though no specifics have been given. Although there’s been rumors and intense speculation prior to the arrest that the hacker was a teen operating out of the UK, London police have not confirmed any link between the two cases. ComicBook reached out to London police for more information and received this brief statement: “We have no further information to share at this stage. Any updates will be shared on our Twitter.” We also reached out to Rockstar Games, but did not receive a response in time for publication.

As of right now, it remains to be seen what will come of this. Rockstar Games has already confirmed that it doesn’t expect any long term disruption to the development of the next Grand Theft Auto, so fans don’t have to worry about the game being internally delayed by years. We still have…

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Whistleblowing drama, Instagram’s teen safety features, Twitter adds podcasts – TechCrunch

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Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has decreased. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps.

This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.

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Twitter whistleblower’s impact (or lack thereof!) on the Elon Musk lawsuit

The headlines this week were dominated by Twitter’s former head of security, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko’s, explosive whistleblower complaint.

The former Twitter employee accused the company of cybersecurity negligence that ranged from a lack of basic security controls to national security threats and foreign intelligence risks. But one more immediate question on everyone’s minds is whether or not Zatko’s statements about bots on the platform will help or hurt Elon Musk’s case.

To some, it may appear that Zatko has backed up Musk’s claims when he notes that there are millions of active accounts on the platform which Twitter is not including in its mDAU metric — a metric Twitter itself invented to count only those users it could monetize by way of advertisements. (That is, mDAUs are mostly people, not spambots.)

“These millions of non-mDAU accounts are part of the median user’s experience on the platform,” states the complaint. “And for this vast set of non-mDAU active accounts, Musk is correct: Twitter executives have little or no personal incentive to accurately ‘detect’ or measure the prevalence…

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Teen “Hackers” on Discord Selling Malware for Quick Cash

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Cybersecurity researchers urge parents to keep track of their children’s online activities.

Avast security researchers have discovered a server on Discord where a group of minors is involved in developing, upgrading, marketing, and selling malware and ransomware strains on the platform, supposedly to earn pocket money.

The researchers believe all of them are minors since they repeatedly mentioned their parents and teachers and casually used age-specific insults. Researchers learned about their activities through their discussion on Discord.

Minors Promoting Easy-to-Use Malware

The hackers are involved in selling malware strains of Snatch, Lunar, and Rift and offer all kinds of services from info-stealers to ransomware and cryptominers. However, researchers noted that teen hackers mainly provide easy-to-use malware builders and toolkits, which help users employ the “Do it yourself” (DIY) approach to use them without actual programming. All they need to do is customization of appearance and functions.

More “Kids Doing Cyber Crime” News

How does the Group operate?

Interested parties must pay a fee to become a group member or use the malware-as-a-service feature. The registration fee ranges between €5 and €25. In their report, Avast researchers noted that around 100 accounts have already subscribed to access a hacking group.

The malware distribution process is a little unconventional. The hackers create a YouTube video demonstrating a fake crack for a popular computer game or commercial software, including a download link in the description.

To develop a sense of authenticity, other members of the Discord group post comments on the video and thank the author while confirming that the link actually worked. This strategy is much more twisted than bots for adding comments since it becomes impossible to identify fraud when a video receives comments from genuine users.

How to Deal with Teen Hackers?

It is a fact that this scenario is concerning. Therefore, hacking talent among teens and minors must be diverted towards positive, ethical purposes for the overall betterment of the cybersecurity industry.

Parents must talk to their…

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As teen hacker is linked to Lapsus$, Okta provides more details on data breach

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Shares in identity and access management company Okta Inc. dropped today as it provided more details about the company’s data breach, as the mastermind behind the Lapsus$ ransomware gang that had taken credit for the data breach was reported to be a 16-year-old boy from the U.K.

As reported yesterday, both Okta and Microsoft Corp. were targeted by Lapsus$. In Okta’s case, screenshots of internal Okta information were shared on Telegram late Monday.

Okta has confirmed that there was a breach and Chief Security Officer David Bradbury has shared a full rundown of what occurred, including a complete timeline of what happened and when.

Bradbury went through when Okta first became aware of a compromise and the story starts on Jan. 20 at 11:18 p.m. The company received an alert that a new factor was added to a Sitel Group employee’s Okta account from a new location. Sitel is one of several companies that Okta employees as a “sub-processor” to provide customer support.

Within 28 minutes of the initial alert, the change of details was escalated to a security incident. By 12:28 a.m. Jan. 21, the Okta service desk terminated the user’s Okta sessions and suspended the account. Later the same day, Okta shared the details with Sitel, which then said it had retained outside support from a leading forensics firm.

The forensics firm delivered a report to Sitel on March 10, with a summary report sent to Okta on March 17. Then, things took a turn, as Lapsus$ shared screenshots on March 22. Sitel then delivered the full report to Okta later the same day.

Following the back and forth, Okta ascertained that the screenshots had been taken from a Sitel support engineer’s computer. The engineer’s computer had been remotely accessed by an attacker using remote desktop protocol. Okta noted that though the attacker never gained access to Okta itself via account takeover, the computer logged into Okta was compromised and hence obtained screenshots and controlled the machine through the RDP session.

“I am greatly disappointed by the long period of time that transpired between our notification to Sitel and the issuance of the complete investigation report,” Bradbury wrote. “Upon…

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