The FBI officers have arrested a 20-year-old Tennessee man and charged
with federal computer hacking for allegedly conspiring to launch cyber
attacks on five organizations in 2013, including two universities and
three companies in the US and Canada, federal law enforcement officials
announced today.
The accused named Timothy Justin French, who go online by the name “Orbit,” is a key member of the collective “NullCrew” hacking group,
that claimed responsibility for dozens of high-profile computer attacks
against corporations, educational institutions, and government
agencies.
NullCrew
is a hacktivist group that came into light in 2012 after a successful
cyber attack against the World Health Organization (WHO) and Public
Broadcasting Service (PBS) in 2012, which resulted in plain-text
username and passwords being posted online on Pastebin.
The group, represent itself as a part of Anonymous hacking
collective, has since 2012 carried out a number of similar high profile
cyber attacks, including a successful infiltration into the servers run
by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security last year.
The accused was arrested without incident by FBI agents at his home in
Morristown, Tenn., east of Knoxville, last week and is about to face
prosecution in U.S. District Court in Chicago.
French, who allegedly used the online handles such as “Orbit,” “@Orbit,” “@Orbit_g1rl,” “crysis,” “rootcrysis,” and “c0rps3,” was charged with conspiracy to commit computer fraud and abuse.
The FBI has been working with a "confidential witness" to engage
members of the NullCrew hacking group in a chat conversation on Skype,
Twitter, and Cryptocat. Unknowingly, during the chat conversations, the
NullCrew members discussed past, present, and future hacking attacks and
shared current computer vulnerabilities used in the attacks.
With the help of these information, the Federal officers tracked the IP
address of one of the computers used in those five attacks as well as
during other online attacks, which later found to be at French's address
in Tennessee. All the records found from the victims’ computers show
access from the same IP address at or around the time the attacks.
"Cyber crime sometimes involves new-age technology but age-old
criminal activity ― unlawful intrusion, theft of confidential
information, and financial harm to victims," said Zachary Fardon,
who has appointed up-and-coming young Assistant U.S. Attorney for the
Northern District of Illinois as a deputy section chief in charge of
targeting Internet crime, in a statement.
"Hackers who think they can anonymously steal private business and personal information from computer systems should be aware that we are determined to find them, to prosecute pernicious online activity, and to protect cyber victims," Fardon added.
If convicted, French faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
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