Suspected Hacker Arrested for Stealing and Selling Unreleased Music

[steven36]

A 19-year-old suspected hacker was arrested for allegedly accessing the cloud and website accounts of award-winning recording artists without authorizations, purportedly stealing unreleased songs and selling the stolen tracks in exchange for cryptocurrency.

 

 

The teenager was arrested in Ipswich, UK, following searches conducted by the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) — a specialist national police unit dedicated to fighting intellectual property crime — on a property from North London and on the one where he was detained.

 

Prior to these searches, PIPCU received information regarding the North London property from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), "the organization that represents the recording industry worldwide."

Investigation started by Manhattan D.A.’s Office

The investigation that led to the man's arrest was launched by Manhattan District Attorney's Office, "after receiving referrals from the recording artists’ management companies, identified one of the perpetrators, and helped effectuate today’s arrest through its formal partnership with the City of London Police."

 

"As one of the world’s leading creative capitals, New York City is dedicated to protecting artists’ intellectual property and ensuring that those who steal it face the music," said Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr.

 

"As demonstrated by this investigation, my Office has the expertise, resources, and partnerships to help cybercrime victims reach across the globe to get justice, and we urge anyone who has been a victim of a hack to report it to us at (212) 335-9600."

 

In turn, City of London Police Commissioner Ian Dyson stated that "Today’s action marks a significant point in our investigation into the individuals responsible for stealing music and selling it on illegal streaming websites, worldwide."

 

"This sort of crime causes significant financial loss to those who work so incredibly hard to produce, write and make music for their fans to love and enjoy."

 

The two law enforcement agencies' partnership started five years ago, in 2014, and it has already resulted in over ten major actions including multiple indictments related to cybercrime, securities fraud, and art schemes.

The Radiohead connection

While details on the "world-famous recording artists" that got their music stolen by the suspected hacker have not yet been officially released, a story that unfolded back in June almost perfectly matches details exposed by the two press releases.

 

Alternative rock band Radiohead released 18 tracks of OK Computer sessions on June 11 after hackers had stolen several archived mini discs from Thom Yorke, the band's main songwriter and lead singer.

 

As Radiohead's lead guitarist Jonny Greenwood explained on Twitter and on Facebook at the time, the stolen OK Computer sessions tracks were never intended to be made public and this prompted the hackers to ask for a $150,000 ransom not to release the hijacked mini-disc archive.

 

In spite of this, instead of giving in to the crooks' requests, Radiohead released all of the 18 hours of stolen content themselves put them all up for sale on Bandcamp to benefit charity.

 

Radiohead also added the following message on their Bandcamp page hosting the OK Computer sessions tracks under the "MINIDISCS [HACKED]" tag name—the tracks and the message are no longer available:

 

We’ve been hacked my archived mini discs from 1995-1998(?) it’s not v interesting there’s a lot of it.
If you want it, you can buy the whole lot here 18 minidisks for £18 the proceeds will go to Extinction Rebellion.
As it’s out there it may as well be out there until we all get bored and move on.

 

OK Computer is Radiohead's third studio album released on June 16, 1997, an album that went straight to number one on the UK Albums Chart, as well as to 21 on the Billboard 200 chart despite being considered both uncommercial and difficult to market. [1, 2]

 

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