A 22-year-old Frenchman was sentenced on Tuesday to three years in U.S. federal prison for his participation in the ShinyHunters hacking group.
He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft and is also required to pay $5 million in restitution.
According to an indictment from prosecutors in the Western District of Washington, Raoult and two co-conspirators hacked more than 60 companies around the world and posted stolen data on dark web forums like RaidForums, EmpireMarket and Exploit.
In some cases, they threatened to leak data if a ransom was not paid.
In 2020 and 2021, ShinyHunters perpetrated a series of hacks on well-known entities, including breaches of the clothing retailer Bonobos, the photo app Pixlr and Microsoft's GitHub account.
It also claimed to have information from 70 million AT&T accounts, although the company denied it had been breached.
According to the DOJ, Raoult and accomplices created spoof websites pretending to be the login pages of legitimate businesses, and sent phishing emails to company employees.
When the victims entered their credentials, the hackers were able to gain access to their accounts.
Raoult's father told DataBreaches.net that the sentence includes served time in Morocco and Seattle, meaning that he only has another 11 months to serve in prison.
James Reddick has worked as a journalist around the world, including in Lebanon and in Cambodia, where he was Deputy Managing Editor of The Phnom Penh Post.
He is also a radio and podcast producer for outlets like Snap Judgment.
This Cyber News was published on therecord.media. Publication date: Wed, 10 Jan 2024 18:00:26 +0000