Australian police have arrested two people in Perth accused of being members of TeamPCP, a prolific hacking group blamed for high-profile hacks against big tech giants in recent months. The two have been charged with more than a dozen hacking, money laundering, and other cybercrime offenses and are expected in court later on Thursday.
According to a statement by the Australian Federal Police, the two men are accused of widespread breaches involving the compromise and tampering of popular open-source projects. The hackers aimed to infect a large number of computers to steal credentials and data, then extort victims into paying a ransom.
The FBI’s cyber division chief Brett Leatherman was quoted as saying that the two alleged members of TeamPCP are accused of hacking into more than a thousand organizations as part of their attacks.
It’s unclear whether the Justice Department plans to seek extradition, and a spokesperson for the FBI did not immediately comment when contacted by TechCrunch.
TeamPCP is a prolific cybercriminal gang known for several widespread hacking campaigns targeting the software supply chain, in which the hackers would break in and maliciously modify a popular open-source software tool used by potentially thousands of companies.
