Hunting Cyber Criminals

CHAPTER 20Cutting through the Disinformation of a 10‐Million‐Dollar Hack

There are days when you just wake up and something completely unexpected happens.

I thought I was finished with this book and then it just happened: GnosticPlayers, a well‐known group that gained notoriety for a series of very high‐profile hacks, decided to publicly post his/their involvement in the theft of 10 million dollars' worth of cryptocurrency.

Through an unprecedented admission of guilt, Nclay, the group's leader, decided to repent for his sins and publicly announce his involvement in the GateHub hack.

What came next was just as unexpected: the supposed tensions between the group members resulted in the public leaks of the group's private collection of hacked databases on RaidForums.com, subsequently referred to as “leaktober.” Virtually every one of the group's high‐value stolen databases, comprising billions of user accounts, passwords, and other private customer information, was published online and suddenly available as a free download.

Nclay continued to air his grievances over public forums, and with each new post came an additional piece of seemingly identifiable information. Not only was GnosticPlayers admitting his own guilt, but he had suddenly decided to partake in conversations where he would openly use his and his partners' real names and identities.

Within no time at all, both of the group's members had their full dox published, and Nclay, the group's leader, had dropped his aliases ...