A former Dutch cybersecurity skilled was sentenced to 4 years in jail after being discovered responsible of hacking and blackmailing greater than a dozen firms within the Netherlands and worldwide.
The suspect, a 21-year-old man from Zandvoort named Pepijn Van der Stap, has been convicted on a number of expenses, together with hacking into victims’ computer systems, extortion, and laundering no less than 2.5 million euros in cryptocurrency.
The court docket sentenced him to 4 years of imprisonment, with one yr being conditional, accompanied by a three-year probationary interval. The decision follows an intensive investigation performed by the Dutch Public Prosecution Service, which requested for a six-year jail sentence.
Van der Stap, alongside along with his accomplices, was concerned in a sequence of cybercrimes that focused each home and worldwide firms and establishments between August 2020 and January 2023, in accordance to the Dutch Public Prosecution Service.
The group resorted to blackmail as a method of extorting giant quantities of cash from focused firms, threatening to leak the stolen knowledge on-line except a ransom was paid. Moreover, Van der Stap infiltrated numerous networks, stealing delicate knowledge from compromised firms and organizations.
When looking his pc, regulation enforcement brokers discovered numerous malicious instruments and private data stolen from tens of millions of people, acquired by hacking, purchases, or exchanges with different cyber criminals, and put up on the market on numerous hacking boards.
The Dutch Public Prosecution Service additionally revealed that Van der Stap helped different criminals by promoting or buying and selling this stolen delicate knowledge, inflicting tens of millions in damages to the affected organizations.
The investigation into Van der Stap’s cybercriminal exercise commenced in March 2021 following a report from an Amsterdam-based firm. Regardless of ongoing authorized proceedings, not all organizations have reported being focused and the extent of their losses.
Whitehat throughout the day, cybercriminal at night time
At one level, Van der Stap labored for Hadrian Safety and volunteered on the Dutch Institute for Vulnerability Disclosure (DIVD), as first reported by DataBreaches.internet.
He was additionally a member of the now-defunct RaidForums and BreachForums, in addition to different hacking boards like Sinister[.]ly, HackForums, Leakforums, and Maza, utilizing a number of nicknames, together with Espeon, Umbreon, Lizardom, Egoshin, Togepi, OFTF, and Rekt.
BreachForums (aka Breached) was seized in June 2023, three months after the arrest of its proprietor, Conor Fitzpatrick (aka Pompompurin).
RaidForums was shut down in April 2022 after its founder and admin, Diogo Santos Coelho, was apprehended in a coordinated motion involving regulation enforcement companies in a number of international locations.
Each have been thought of the most important hacking boards earlier than their seizure, with lots of of 1000’s of customers using them as on-line platforms for buying and selling and promoting stolen databases.
“The vast majority of my prison hacking actions happened earlier than I began doing lawful work. I had already began slicing again on blackhat hacking earlier than I began working for whitehat entities. As soon as I started working in authentic jobs, I actually began dedicating my expertise to moral functions,” Van der Stap informed DataBreaches.internet in an interview.
“For about 16 months earlier than my arrest, I used to be not engaged in a lot criminal activity and needed to get out altogether. However as a lot as I needed to get out, it felt not possible at occasions.”
