Members of the hacker collective known as Crackas With Attitude are heading straight to a courthouse.
Two members of the group, Andrew Boggs and Justin Liverman (known online as Incursio and D3f4ult, respectively), have been arrested, the FBI said.
Three other members located in the UK are being investigated by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
SEE ALSO:Hacker breaches CIA director's email, threatens to hack Trump and ClintonBoggs, 22, from North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, and Liverman, 24, from Morehead City, North Carolina, were arrested Thursday "on charges related to their alleged roles in the computer hacking of several senior U.S. government officials and U.S. government computer systems," the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.
Between October 2015 and February 2016, the group used "social engineering" hacking techniques including victim impersonation, the related affidavit says, to gain access to the personal online accounts of senior U.S. government officials and their families.
They also uploaded personal information from the victims to public sites, made harassing phone calls to the victims and their family members, and defaced victims' social media accounts, it says.
Tweet may have been deleted
The affidavit links three Twitter accounts to Liverman: @_d3f4ult, @sh1n0d4, @bashtien_, the last of which has been suspended. It also links two to Boggs: @incursiosubter and @genuinelyspooky.
Three further accounts linked to the name Cracka (@porng0d, @phphax and @dickreject) have all been suspended by Twitter. Another account, @fruityhax, linked to a user named in the affadavit as Cubed, has also been taken down; one more, @derplaughing, connected to a user identified as Derp, is still active.
The conspiracy began in July 2015, the affidavit says, when Cracka spoke to Boggs (or Incursio) via Twitter direct messages on Twitter, telling him he'd obtained the Social Security number of a senior U.S. government official and had "jacked" the official's Comcast account to listen to their voicemails and control what they saw on TV.
From there, the affidavit lists a series of incursions into victims' email, Facebook and internet accounts, as well as the hacking of the Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal (LEEP), a computer system for U.S. law enforcement, intelligence and criminal justice professionals.
It also publishes a transcript of a chat conversation between Cracka and Liverman in which the former says he's "swatting" a police department. Cracka subsequently tweeted a series of links about a bomb alert at the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, the affidavit says.
Crackas With Attitude first stepped into the spotlight last October when the group claimed it hacked into CIA Director John Brennan's email. At the time, a hacker calling himself Cubed claimed responsibility. Identifying himself as a 15-year-old American high school student, he said the hack was so easy a 5-year-old could do it.
In January, Cracka told Motherboard he had hacked into Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's accounts. By February, he was believed to have been arrested by UK police, who confirmed that a 16-year-old boy was arrested in the East Midlands and charged with various counts related to the 1990 Computer Misuse Act.
Boggs and Liverman are set to appear at the federal courthouse in Alexandria next week. Mashablehas reached out to the CPS for more information.
UPDATE Sept. 9 2016 14:31 P.M.- One of the men arrested, Justin Liverman, was publicly identified months before the FBI caught up with him, according to a report on Motherboard.
Liverman was doxed in April 2016 by another hacker known as Kayntias, the site reports. Kayntias publicly associated several social media accounts linked to Liverman with some of the online aliases he was using that the FBI identified. “The feds were late to the party,” Kayntias said.
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