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American authorities announced the sentencing of 39-year-old Nathan Francis Wyatt, a former member of the notorious hacker group The Dark Overlord (TDO).
According to law enforcement officials, since 2016, Wyatt has been a member of the TDO, and these were the "golden years" for the group, when hackers regularly hacked large companies, stole confidential data, and then demanded huge ransoms from victims. If they refused to pay, the attackers sold the stolen information on hacker forums, published it on the Internet for free, or leaked it to the press in order to tarnish the damaged company’s reputation.
According to court documentsIn particular, Wyatt's role was to contact victims and negotiate a ransom. Investigators tracked him down, as Wyatt used phone numbers registered in his real name on several occasions. As a result, in 2017, the hacker was arrested in the UK, after which he was extradited to the United States in December 2019.
Law enforcement officials have now reported that Wyatt has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and computer fraud. The hacker was sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay compensation to the victims in the amount of $ 1,467,048.
Let me remind you that in 2018 he was arrested in Serbiaanother member of The Dark Overlord. Little was known about the detainee: in the documents he appeared under the initials SS, he was 38 years old, and he lived in Belgrade. What role he played in TDO is still unknown.
There is no information about other arrests of members of The Dark Overlord, that is, it can be assumed that most of the group's members are still at large.
Retrospective
As mentioned above, The Dark Overlord is a group known not only in narrow underground circles, because several years ago this name regularly appeared on the pages of the media. TDO made a name for itself back in 2015 when it attacked medical organizations, stole data, and then blackmailed victims into paying, otherwise threatening to release the stolen information.
For example, in 2016 TDOput up for sale a large database containing health insurance data of 9,278,352 Americans. In the same year, the hackers, who were eager to communicate with the media, shared their vision with journalists and said that the media is a convenient tool that other groups should not neglect. The TDO spokesman said that cybercriminals are completely wrong to underestimate the media, because publications in the press help to make a name so that later they look more threatening in the eyes of victims.
In 2017, TDO slightly “changed the profile” of their activities and kidnapped a number of films and television shows that had not yet been released, and then tried to blackmail Netflix and Larson Studios. Since companies refused to deal with intruders and pay the ransom, The Pirate Bayten episodes of the then new, fifth season of Orange Is The New Black were published .
Then TDO warned that the next victims would be ABC, Fox, National Geographic IFC and still Netflix, since more than one series was stolen. The hackers said that they have at their disposal hundreds of gigabytes of unreleased and non-distributable copies of various content from the servers of Hollywood studios. In June 2017, the hacker group kept their promise. This time on torrent tracker The Pirate Bay were made publiceight episodes of the yet to air TV show Steve Harvey's Funderdome, owned by ABC. The hackers reported that they approached ABC representatives "with a very attractive business proposal", but the company refused to communicate, and the attackers decided that it was time to "present a gift to the kind people from the Internet."
The Dark Overlord also has the following hacks (the list is far from complete):
According to law enforcement officials, since 2016, Wyatt has been a member of the TDO, and these were the "golden years" for the group, when hackers regularly hacked large companies, stole confidential data, and then demanded huge ransoms from victims. If they refused to pay, the attackers sold the stolen information on hacker forums, published it on the Internet for free, or leaked it to the press in order to tarnish the damaged company’s reputation.
According to court documentsIn particular, Wyatt's role was to contact victims and negotiate a ransom. Investigators tracked him down, as Wyatt used phone numbers registered in his real name on several occasions. As a result, in 2017, the hacker was arrested in the UK, after which he was extradited to the United States in December 2019.
Law enforcement officials have now reported that Wyatt has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and computer fraud. The hacker was sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay compensation to the victims in the amount of $ 1,467,048.
Let me remind you that in 2018 he was arrested in Serbiaanother member of The Dark Overlord. Little was known about the detainee: in the documents he appeared under the initials SS, he was 38 years old, and he lived in Belgrade. What role he played in TDO is still unknown.
There is no information about other arrests of members of The Dark Overlord, that is, it can be assumed that most of the group's members are still at large.
Retrospective
As mentioned above, The Dark Overlord is a group known not only in narrow underground circles, because several years ago this name regularly appeared on the pages of the media. TDO made a name for itself back in 2015 when it attacked medical organizations, stole data, and then blackmailed victims into paying, otherwise threatening to release the stolen information.
For example, in 2016 TDOput up for sale a large database containing health insurance data of 9,278,352 Americans. In the same year, the hackers, who were eager to communicate with the media, shared their vision with journalists and said that the media is a convenient tool that other groups should not neglect. The TDO spokesman said that cybercriminals are completely wrong to underestimate the media, because publications in the press help to make a name so that later they look more threatening in the eyes of victims.
In 2017, TDO slightly “changed the profile” of their activities and kidnapped a number of films and television shows that had not yet been released, and then tried to blackmail Netflix and Larson Studios. Since companies refused to deal with intruders and pay the ransom, The Pirate Bayten episodes of the then new, fifth season of Orange Is The New Black were published .
Then TDO warned that the next victims would be ABC, Fox, National Geographic IFC and still Netflix, since more than one series was stolen. The hackers said that they have at their disposal hundreds of gigabytes of unreleased and non-distributable copies of various content from the servers of Hollywood studios. In June 2017, the hacker group kept their promise. This time on torrent tracker The Pirate Bay were made publiceight episodes of the yet to air TV show Steve Harvey's Funderdome, owned by ABC. The hackers reported that they approached ABC representatives "with a very attractive business proposal", but the company refused to communicate, and the attackers decided that it was time to "present a gift to the kind people from the Internet."
The Dark Overlord also has the following hacks (the list is far from complete):
- HE Parts International Morgan ;
- Line 204 toner , working with Hollywood studios;
- Association of chiropractors Austin ( the Austin the Manual Therapy Associates );
- Center for Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Therapy SMART ;
- record company Gorilla Glue ;
- and many others , including Pre-Con Products, GS Polymers, PcWorks, International Textiles & Apparel, UniQoptics.