Threat Group Cards: A Threat Actor Encyclopedia

Other threat group: Gnosticplayers

Names	Gnosticplayers (self given)
Country	Pakistan
Motivation	Financial gain
First seen	2019
Description	(ZDNet) The hacker said that he put up the data for sale mainly because these companies had failed to protect passwords with strong encryption algorithms like bcrypt. Most of the hashed passwords the hacker put up for sale today can cracked with various levels of difficulty –but they can be cracked. “I got upset because I feel no one is learning,” the hacker told ZDNet in an online chat earlier today. “I just felt upset at this particular moment, because seeing this lack of security in 2019 is making me angry.” In a conversation with ZDNet last month, the hacker told us he wanted to hack and put up for sale more than one billion records and then retire and disappear with the money. But in a conversation today, the hacker says this is not his target anymore, as he learned that other hackers have already achieved the same goal before him. Gnosticplayers also revealed that not all the data he obtained from hacked companies had been put up for sale. Some companies gave into extortion demands and paid fees so breaches would remain private. “I came to an agreement with some companies, but the concerned startups won’t see their data for sale,” he said. “I did it that’s why I can’t publish the rest of my databases or even name them.”
Observed
Tools used
Operations performed	Feb 2019	620 million accounts stolen from 16 hacked websites now for sale on dark web, seller boasts <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/02/11/620_million_hacked_accounts_dark_web/>
	Feb 2019	127 million user records from 8 companies put up for sale on the dark web <https://www.zdnet.com/article/127-million-user-records-from-8-companies-put-up-for-sale-on-the-dark-web/>
	Feb 2019	Hacker is selling 93 million user records from eight companies, including GfyCat. <https://www.zdnet.com/article/hacker-puts-up-for-sale-third-round-of-hacked-databases-on-the-dark-web/>
	Mar 2019	Round 4: Hacker returns and puts 26Mil user records for sale on the Dark Web <https://www.zdnet.com/article/round-4-hacker-returns-and-puts-26mil-user-records-for-sale-on-the-dark-web/>
	Apr 2019	Hacker Gnosticplayers has stolen over 932 million user records from 44 companies <https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-hacker-has-dumped-nearly-one-billion-user-records-over-the-past-two-months/>
	May 2019	Australian tech unicorn Canva suffers security breach <https://www.zdnet.com/article/australian-tech-unicorn-canva-suffers-security-breach/>
	Sep 2019	Going by the online alias Gnosticplayers, the serial hacker told The Hacker News that this time, he managed to breach “Words With Friends,” a popular Zynga-developed word puzzle game, and unauthorisedly access a massive database of more than 218 million users. <https://thehackernews.com/2019/09/zynga-game-hacking.html>

Last change to this card: 14 April 2020

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