The City of London Police said on Friday that two of the seven adolescents arrested last week for alleged ties to the LAPSUS$ data extortion group, a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old, have been charged.
"Both teenagers have been charged with three counts of unauthorised computer access with intent to impair the reliability of data; one count of fraud by false representation; and one count of unauthorised computer access with intent to hinder access to data," City of London Police Detective Inspector Michael O'Sullivan said in a statement.
Furthermore, the 16-year-old unidentified youth has been charged with one count of causing a computer to execute a function in order to prevent illegal access to the 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 telling The Hacker News that all of the suspects were "released under investigation."
However, the arrests have not hampered the cartel's activities, as it returned from a "holiday" this week to release 70GB of data belonging to software services firm Globant on March 30. The Luxembourg-based corporation stated that it is "doing an extensive investigation" and "taking strict measures to prevent such accidents."
"In today's environment, threat actors prefer using ransomware to encrypt data and systems and frequently extort victims for significant amounts of cryptocurrency in exchange for decryption keys, sometimes turning up the pressure with the threat of publishing stolen data," Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 team said.
"LAPSUS$, on the other hand, takes an unorthodox strategy - reputation appears to be the goal more often than financial gain for this outfit."
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