Federal authorities have arrested two alleged members of a hacking group known as the Apophis Squad on charges of making false threats of violent attacks and staging attacks on multiple computer systems.
According to an announcement from the Department of Justice (DoJ), the two defendants, Timothy Dalton Vaughn, 20, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and George Duke-Cohan, 19, of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom, are allegedly part of a global group of hackers suspected of wreaking havoc on the internet for the better part of 2018, including launching distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
Duke-Cohan, who is already serving a three-year sentence in the UK for threatening an airline, which turned out to be a hoax, is believed to go by the names DigitalCrimes and 7R1D3N7 online.
The defendants face multiple charges, including conducting cyber- and swatting attacks against individuals, businesses and institutions in the US and the UK, according to the DoJ.
“Members of Apophis Squad communicated various threats – sometimes using ‘spoofed’ email addresses to make it appear the threats had been sent by innocent parties, including the mayor of London,” the announcement stated.
“They also allegedly defaced websites and launched denial-of-service attacks. In addition, Vaughn allegedly conducted a DDoS attack that took down hoonigan.com, the website of a Long Beach motorsport company, for three days, and sent extortionate emails to the company demanding a Bitcoin payment to cease the attack.”
If convicted of all charges in the 11-count indictment, Vaughn could be sentenced to a maximum of 80 years in prison. Duke-Cohen, who is facing nine charges, would be sentenced to a maximum of 65 years if found guilty.
“The Apophis Squad also took credit for hacking and defacing the website of a university in Colombia, resulting in visitors to the site seeing a picture of Adolf Hitler holding a sign saying ‘YOU ARE HACKED’ alongside the message ‘Hacked by APOPHIS SQUAD,’” the DoJ wrote.
Source: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/doj-charges-hackers-with-staging-1/
