Hacker Group Submission
Christopher Kidd

The first hacker group and considered one of the worst I will cover is the group known as the Lizard Squad. This group is mainly known for claims of distributed denial-of-service claims. They targeted to disrupt gaming related services. On September 3, 2014, The group seemingly announced they were disbanding. Later on they seemed to reappear claiming responsibility for attacks on popular websites.

Vinnie Omari is the member of the squad that was arrested and then bailed out for fraud by false representation – Fraud Act 2006, conspiracy to steal from another, and unauthorized computer access with the intent to commit other offenses. The first claimed attack from the group was on August 18, 2014. The servers for the game League of Legends were taken offline with a DDoS attack. We will highlight other claims in the following paragraph.

On November 23, 2014, Lizard Squad claimed they attacked Destiny servers with a DDoS attack. The PlayStation Network was attacked twice. August 24, 2014 the PlayStation Network was taken down via a DDoS attack, with Lizard Squad claiming responsibility. And again on December 8, 2014, the PlayStation Network was again attacked, purportedly by Lizard Squad. Anyone who attempted to access the PlayStation Store during the time it was down were greeted by the message: "Page Not Found! It's not you. It's the internet's fault." Many others are claimed by them such as Xbox Live DDoS, the Machinima attack, North Korea DDoS, the Christmas attack on the Xbox Live and PlayStation networks and a very controversial Malaysia Airlines website attack.

Next we will cover the group known as the Chaos Computer Club (CCC). This is Europe’s largest group of hackers. The CCC is located in Germany and other German speaking countries. In general, the CCC advocates more transparency in government, freedom of information, and the human right to communication. The club also claims to support universal free computer access and to tech infrastructures. They are known as the most influential hacker group in the realm of digital organizations.

A brief history of the group shows that they were founded in Berlin on September 12, 1981. The CCC became famous when the accessed a German computer network causing money to be transferred to a bank in favor of the club. The funds were returned in front of the press the next day. In 1989 the CCC was involved in the first case of cyberespionage to make headlines worldwide. The CCC uncovered a computer surveillance software known as the Staatstrojaner. They exposed that this software used by the German police, was in direct violation of the laws set forth by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany.

The CCC host many different events in the region. One of which is the Chaos Communication Congress. This is Europe’s biggest hacker gathering held annually. They have another annual event held on Easter weekend called Eaterhegg. This event was more workshop oriented in nature. Another event that was started but was discontinued in 2014 was a conference called SIGINT. Some members of the group are active in tech and political conferences all over the globe.

The third group we will cover is the group known as Putter Panda. This group is based out of Shanghai and has likely links to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. The group is estimated to have started cyberespionage operations in 2007. However they have only been monitored since about 2012. It appears that hey focus on exploiting productivity applications such as Adobe Reader and Microsoft Office creating malware through email attacks.

A suspected member of the group for procuring domains linked to the group is Chen Ping also known as cpyy. Putter Panda is also said to have used Remote Access Trojans termed pngdownloader and httpclient, along with malware to attack target systems. Cpyy adopted bizarre names and monikers, and is said to have assigned 'jobs' to members of multiple hacking forums.

The intelligence company known as Crowdstrike published findings in their latest report on multiple adversary operation analysis. These were looked at based on reverse engineering, intelligence analysis and by relying on multiple cultural and language specialists. Crowdstrike states that it actively tracks more than 70 threat actors, some much more advanced than the Putter Panda group. China has vehemently denied the cyber espionage charges levelled by the United States, and in fact accused the US government of carrying out online attacks on various companies in China.