The Dark Overlord (hacker group)

The Dark Overlord (also known as the TDO) is an international hacker organization which garnered significant publicity through cybercrime extortion of high-profile targets and public demands for ransom to prevent the release of confidential or potentially embarrassing documents.^[1]

The group gained its initial notoriety through the sale of stolen medical records on TheRealDeal, a darkweb marketplace.^[2][3] Major targets for the group included the extortion of Netflix, which resulted in the leak of unreleased episodes of the series Orange Is the New Black,^[4] and Disney.^[5]

In 2017, the group broke its trend of hacking and extortion, and began a series of terror-based attacks starting with the Columbia Falls school district in Montana.^[6][7] The group sent life-threatening text messages to students and their parents, demanding payment to prevent the murder of children.^[8] These attacks forced the closure of more than 30 schools across multiple school districts, resulting in more than 15,000 students being home from school for an entire week. During a senate committee hearing Senator Steve Daines (MT) referred to these attacks as "unprecedented".

On December 31, 2018, TDO announced the Lloyd's of London and Silverstein Properties "9/11 Papers" hack on Twitter, with thousands of incriminating documents^[9][10][11] to be released in stages unless US$2,000,000 in bitcoin were paid.^[12] TDO was subsequently banned from many social media platforms including Twitter, Reddit, Pastebin and removed from the front end of an uncensorable blockchain called Steemit.^[13] Platforms unrelated to TDO such as www.hpub.org also had their social media accounts eliminated or followers deleted for serving as mirrors of TDO hacked documents.^[14][15][16]

Arrests

Nathan Wyatt, a member of The Dark Overlord hacking group, was extradited from the UK to the US in December 2019 to face charges in St. Louis for his involvement in the group.^[17][18] According to the charges, Wyatt "conspired to steal sensitive personally identifying information from victim companies and release those records on criminal marketplaces unless victims paid Bitcoin ransoms.^[19] In September 2020 Wyatt was sentenced to five years in federal prison on a charge of "conspiring to commit aggravated identity theft and computer fraud" and was ordered to pay almost $1.5 million in restitution.^[20]