Two teenagers hacked into US intelligence database posing as a police officer

US police have arrested one of two teenagers suspected of hacking into a US intelligence database. The hackers, who allegedly belong to the ViLE criminal group, posed as a police officer, threatening users with disclosing their personal data online.

According to prosecutors, Sagar Steven Singh and Nicholas Seraolo used police officer credentials to access a «closed, password-protected portal» maintained by a US federal law enforcement agency. The portal exchanges information from government databases with state and local law enforcement agencies.

The prosecutor’s office claims that the attackers gained access to the portal using the Weep descriptor and then blackmailed the victims using personal data from the database. It is not yet known what exactly the blackmail consisted of. However, the ViLE group is known as «a group of cybercriminals specializing in obtaining victims' personal data, which is then used to harass, threaten or extort them.

Sagar Steven Singh appeared in federal court yesterday, while Seraolo is still at large. Co-conspirators can be sentenced to up to 5 years in prison.

In early March, we told you about a 19-year-old hacker from Dnipro region who created malware to automatically guess passwords to user accounts on various Ukrainian resources. He organized the data into databases that he sold on hacker forums. During a search of the offender’s house, the police found information from more than a million accounts of Ukrainian citizens. According to the Criminal Code, the fraudster can be sentenced to 3 to 8 years in prison for such activities.