Europol Dismantles One of the Internet's Oldest Hacker Groups

[steven36]

Europol, French, UK, and Thai police arrested eight people they suspect to have been involved or to have been part of a notorious hacker group known as Rex Mundi (Latin for "King of the World").

 

 

The group has been active since at least 2012. Its modus operandi revolved around hacking into companies' networks, stealing private information, and later contacting the victims to request the payment of a ransom fee.

 

Hackers demanded fees for not disclosing the hacks, but sometimes also asked for higher sums of money for revealing the security flaw they used to enter the victim's network.

Group left a trail of hacked firms in its wake

While the date the group formed is unknown, the earliest reports of Rex Mundi hacks go back to the summer of 2012.

 

In the early 2010s, when hacker groups like Anonymous or LulzSec were a bit more brash about their hacks, Rex Mundi often bragged about their recent victims, announcing hacks on Twitter, and often dumping data when companies didn't pay.

 

According to a trail of hacks documented on Softpedia's Security News section, past victims included —in chronological order— AmeriCash Advance, Webassur, Drake International, Buy Way, Hoststar, Websolutions.it, Numericable, Habeas, AlfaNet, Domino's Pizza, and Banque Cantonale de Geneve (BCGE).

 

But as law enforcement started arresting hackers and hacktivists left and right, the group changed its modus operandi and eventually went underground. Rex Mundi abandoned its flashy mode of operation and continued to work in the shadows, without announcing their hacks online, to reporters, or leaking data when companies failed to pay.

One hack goes bad

The group continued to operate until last year, according to Europol. The hack that undone them was of a British-based firm, whose network they'd breached, stole data from, and later attempted to extort.

 

Days after this hack, Rex Mundi contacted the company via telephone and requested their usual ransom. According to Europol, a French-speaking person demanded payments in Bitcoin equivalent to €580,000 ($675,000) for not disclosing the hack and €825,000 ($960,000) for also revealing how they broke in. For each day the company failed to respond, Rex Mundi would add another €210,000 ($245,000) on top of the ransom fee.

 

These sums are far from the initial ransom demands of $5,000 - $10,000 the group used to make in the early 2010s.

 

The British company declined to pay, and instead contacted authorities. Information gathered by UK police led to the arrest of five French nationals a month later, in June 2017.

 

One of these persons, the leader, admitted his role in the extortion scheme, while also revealing they didn't do any of the hacking but hired hackers on the Dark Web to do this instead.

 

French police arrested two of these hackers in October 2017, and Thai police arrested a third in May 2018, effectively putting an end to one of the longer lasting hacking groups of this decade.

 

Source

 

[straycat19]

8 hours ago, steven36 said:

while also revealing they didn't do any of the hacking but hired hackers on the Dark Web to do this instead.

 

This is a common scenario.  The majority of so called hackers couldn't hack their way out of a wet paperbag full of holes.  They rely on others to do the work for them and then take credit.  Mostly these are script kiddies.  The sure sign a person isn't a hacker is when they use hacker in their user name  or things they like to do.  Real hackers prefer to stay hidden and not reveal what they do as individuals. 

 

Europol has really stepped up their activities in cybercrime fighting in the last year.  Which from my perspective is a positive thing.

[steven36]

1 hour ago, straycat19 said:

This is a common scenario.  The majority of so called hackers couldn't hack their way out of a wet paperbag full of holes.  They rely on others to do the work for them and then take credit.  Mostly these are script kiddies.  The sure sign a person isn't a hacker is when they use hacker in their user name  or things they like to do.  Real hackers prefer to stay hidden and not reveal what they do as individuals. 

The smart ones got out of it  or changed sides  and became whitehats, LulzSec aka Anonymous died years ago there leader rated them out , like you say now days real hackers don't want no one to know who they are  when someone says there Anonymous it could be the  FBI or it's some wannabe fake Anonymous hackers  who buys hacks off the dark web from real hackers.  If they chaught the best years ago you know these kids days are numbered .  They  said Anonymous declared war  on Trump, and then disappeared.  This was not the  real Anonymous they real Anonymous went to  jail fighting the Government and never did back down tell after they was caught .  The Anonymous today  is just a propaganda machine  were they ride off it's name.

 

Quote

 

One former member went even further: “My personal opinion is that the concept, movement, and organization that is Anonymous is simply dead,” said Hector X. Monsegur, a security researcher who in a former life was known as Sabu, the best-known member of Anonymous and its offshoot LulzSec. He later became an informant for the FBI.

Anonymous burst onto the scene in 2008 with a high-profile campaign against the Church of Scientology that, in their view, was attempting to censor the internet by removing all traces of a video featuring Tom Cruise promoting the religion.

“There have been too many false claims by people claiming to be Anonymous. Every time you turn around there is a new Anonymous video, but no movement to support it,” Wauchula Ghost, a hacker affiliated with Anonymous, told VICE News. Earlier this year, operating on his own, Wauchula Ghost hacked Islamic State Twitter accounts, posting gay porn, rainbow flags, and messages of support for the LGBT community.

 

 

I use to watch the real Anonymous on the internet  in action  every time they knocked a site offline they go zero down and all  of them got caught too

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/21/anonymous-arrests-fbi_n_3780980.html

 

It like  Robinhood  , Hollywood  made movies about it and turned these guys into folk heroes. But there has been no moment since 2013 just propaganda.