Hackers Allegedly Linked to Global Criminal Syndicate Arrested in Singapore

Singaporean authorities have arrested six people for alleged involvement in a global syndicate that’s responsible for numerous cyber activities worldwide.

Some members of the general public have a misguided notion that hackers are lonely individuals operating on their own, possibly from a dark room in a basement. The reality is so different from this romanticized image that it can be difficult to believe.

When it comes to large groups of hackers operating worldwide, they are often part of organized crime, or they work at the behest of nation states. A good example are the groups operating on behalf of North Korea that managed to extract billions of dollars from ransomware attacks alone.

But those groups, like many others, don’t operate in a vacuum. They need support from other hackers, who, for example, obtain the necessary credentials that allow them to break into a companies’ infrastructure and deploy the malware. It’s all part of an industry that operates with many different parts, spread across the world.

The people arrested in Singapore, five Chinese nationals and one Singaporean, are accused of being part of such a group.

“On 9 September 2024, about 160 officers from the Singapore Police Force’s Criminal Investigation Department, Police Intelligence Department, Special Operations Command and the Internal Security Department conducted simultaneous raids at multiple residential locations island-wide,” said the authorities. “The operation led to the arrest of the six men who are believed to be linked to a global syndicate which conducts malicious cyber activities.”

“All six men will be remanded for further investigations as the Police continue to investigate into their local network of contacts, and the global syndicate to which they are linked,” the Singaporean authorities added.

The individuals are suspected of carrying out global malicious cyber operations from Singapore. Numerous devices were also confiscated during the raid, along with stolen personal information of people outside Singapore, various computer hacking tools including software to control malware (such as PlugX), and $850,000 in cryptocurrency.