Cybercriminals we lost to the law in 2022
This year witnessed some of the most captivating cybercrimes and break — and the highest-profile arrests — everything from teenage hackers breaking into Fortune 500 networks to someone hiding billions of dollars worth of bitcoins under the floorboards.
We reflect on the cybercriminals we lost to the law in 2022.
WhatsApp Hacking Technology
A Mexican businessman admitted to selling WhatsApp hacking tools, Wi-Fi interceptors and Signal Jammers both for profit and personal use.
Carlos Guerrero was charged by the Department of Justice with, among other things, organizing the sale of hacking tools to Mexican politicians and using other tools he provided to intercept telephone conversations of an American adversary.
UK arrests teenage hackers linked to Uber, GTA hack
Police in London announced in September that a 17-year-old suspect in high-profile breaches at Rockstar Games and giant Uber had been charged with multiple counts of computer misuse and breach of bail.
These two hacks were among the most famous of 2022. Uber was forced to shut down a number of its internal tools while kicking the hacker off the network because they believed a hacker connected to Lapsus$ was behind the attack.
Uber employees received a message saying, “I announce that I am a hacker and Uber has suffered a data breach,” just before the Slack system was shut down. According to reports, the hacker also suggested that Uber drivers should be paid more.
Lapsus$ finally caught
In 2022, the Lapsus$ gang became famous. After emerging a year ago, the ransomware soon claimed a number of well-known victims, including Okta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Samsung.
The group once seemed unstoppable, but some of its members were arrested in March this year. At the time, the City of London Police confirmed in a statement TechCrunch that seven people between the ages of 16 and 21 were detained in connection with Lapsus$.
One of the biggest bank robberies in American history
Paige Thompson, a former engineer in Amazon’s cloud business, was found guilty of a breach that exposed the private information and money of 100 million CapitalOne customers in 2019.
One of the largest bank robberies in American history, it affected one million Canadians and resulted in the theft of credit scores, restrictions and balances. Thompson was accused of hacking into CapitalOne’s cloud storage, which resides on Amazon’s servers.
Prosecutors said the former Amazon engineer was “one bad day away from sharing the data she stole.”
James Zhong, hacker who stole billions of Silk Road’s bitcoin
The mystery of notorious dark web drug market Silk Road’s lost billions was solved in a stunning but underwhelming end to one of the US government’s longest-running cyber cases.
Authorities claimed in November that they had discovered $3.36 billion in bitcoin hidden in a popcorn box under the floorboards of the bathroom cabinet in the hacker’s house nearly a decade ago.
The hacker, a citizen of Georgia named James Zhong, agreed to surrender the huge amount of bitcoin as well as $600,000 in cash and other precious metals.
