The City of London Police said on Friday that two of the seven adolescents detained last week for their suspected ties to the LAPSUS$ data extortion group, a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old, had been charged.
"Both teenagers have been charged with three counts of unauthorised access to a computer with the intent to impair the reliability of data; one count of fraud by false representation; and one count of unauthorised access to a computer with the intent to hinder access to data," City of London Police Detective Inspector Michael O'Sullivan said in a statement.
Furthermore, the 16-year-old child has been charged with one count of manipulating a computer to execute a function in order to prevent illegal access to a software.
The charges follow the arrest of seven suspected LAPSUS$ gang members aged 16 to 21 by the City of London Police on March 25, with the agency later notifying The Hacker News that all of the suspects had been "released under investigation."
The arrests haven't put a stop to the cartel's actions, which included leaking 70GB of data belonging to software services major Globant on March 30 after returning from a "holiday" this week. The Luxembourg-based firm is "doing a comprehensive investigation" and "taking strict steps to prevent such instances," according to a statement.
LAPSUS$ has garnered prominence in a matter of months for their hacking binge, which included obtaining and distributing source code from a number of top-tier technology businesses on their Telegram channel, which presently has over 58,000 users.
"In today's climate, threat actors prefer to encrypt data and systems using ransomware and often extort victims for large sums of bitcoin in return for decryption keys, sometimes adding to the pressure by threatening to expose stolen material," according to Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 team.
"LAPSUS$, on the other hand, takes an unorthodox strategy in that it appears that notoriety, rather than financial gain, is the group's primary purpose."
