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Cyber Risks · Krebs on Security

Bomb Threat Hoaxer Exposed by Hacked Gaming Site

Summary: Federal authorities arrested Timothy Dalton Vaughn, a 20-year-old from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, alleged to be a key member of the Apophis Squad, which sent spoofed bomb threat emails to 2,000 U.S. schools and more than 400 in the U.K. and launched DDoS attacks on sites including KrebsOnSecurity and Protonmail. Vaughn, who used aliases including HDGZero, WantedByFeds and Xavier Farbel, appears to have been identified after hackers breached game maker BlankMediaGames and leaked account details of 7.6 million Town of Salem users, including a late-2018 signup under the username hdgzero with the email xavierfarbel@gmail.com.

Key Takeaway: The indictment charges Vaughn and Apophis Squad leader George Duke-Cohan with conspiracy and eight additional felonies, and Vaughn faces a statutory maximum of 80 years if convicted on all 11 charges - while the group's bomb threats forced evacuations at thousands of schools and a United Airlines flight with nearly 300 passengers was quarantined for four hours in San Francisco.

Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗

Topics
Data Breaches
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