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Two teenagers charged with hacking in connection with cyber-crime gang
13 hrs ago
Two teenagers have been charged with multiple hacking offences in connection with an investigation into notorious cyber-crime gang Lapsus$.
Two boys, aged 16, from London, and 17, from Oxfordshire, appeared at Highbury Corner Magistrates Court today, accused of hacking major technology companies.
They were allegedly working for a cyber-crime gang in operations worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Lapsus$ is a cyber gang that has hacked information from major firs including Microsoft and Okta.
The gang often attempts to extort organisations they hack and threaten to leak data unless they receive large sums of money. 
Both teenagers are charged with three counts of unauthorised access with intent to impair operation of or hinder access to a computer, and two counts of fraud by false representation.
The 16-year-old, from London, has also been charged with one count of causing a computer to perform a function to secure unauthorised access to a programme.
The boys are in some cases said to have carried out ‘sim swaps’ with mobile phone users, gaining access to bank accounts and Bitcoin.
They sat next to family members in separate hearings in court and spoke only to confirm their details.
Prosecutor Valerie Benjamin said the case should be sent to crown court due to its complex nature and the sums allegedly involved.
Both were released on conditional bail ahead of a further hearing at Southwark Crown Court on April 29.
In a series of posts on the messaging app Telegram, members of the shadowy group boasted that they had breached Okta, the San Francisco-based company that helps employees of more than 15,000 organizations securely access their networks and applications.
Okta confirmed that hackers may have accessed data from hundreds of its after digitally breaking into the laptop of an engineer at a Miami-based contractor.
Okta’s shares plummeted 11 per cent amid criticism of the digital authentication firm’s slow response to the intrusion.
Lapsus$ previously claimed responsibility for hacking Nvidia, Samsung Electronics and the gaming company Ubisoft Entertainment, the maker of Assassin’s Creed. 
Lapsus$ also said it had snatched source code from Microsoft’s Bing search engine, Bing Maps and the Cortana digital assistant program.
Microsoft confirmed the breach in a blog post, saying that the hackers gained ‘limited access’ to its source code, and that the attackers had compromised a single account.
‘No customer code or data was involved in the observed activities,’ the blog entry read.
‘Our cybersecurity response teams quickly engaged to remediate the compromised account and prevent further activity.’
According to Microsoft, Lapsus$ started targeting organisations in the UK and South America before setting its sights on international targets, including governments, tech companies, media, retail and healthcare sectors.
What is cyber-crime gang Lapsus$ and who have they hacked?
Lapsus$ is a cyber gang that has hacked information from major firs including Microsoft, Okta and Nvidia.
The group was created on December 10, 2021 and first aimed its attacks at Portuguese and Latin American firms before setting global technology firms in its sights, intelligence firm Flashpoint said.
The group’s targets have included:
Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Centre said the aim of the group was to ‘gain elevated access through stolen credentials that enable data theft and destructive attacks against a targeted organisation’.
It said this sometimes resulted in ‘extortion’ and that the group’s tactics suggested it was run by ‘a cyber-criminal motivated by theft and destruction’.
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