A man claiming to be the leader of the cybergang Team GhostShell contacted SCMagazine.com via email under the name White Fox over the weekend, allegedly to come clean about his identity and his exploits - which include hacking NASA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) - reportedly in a bid to eventually join the information security industry.
“I want to own up to the things I've done and I'd very much like to be apart [sic] of this industry legally,” said a man who identified himself as 24-year-old G. Razvan Eugen of Bucharest, Romania, who plainly stated "I am the man behind the pseudonym Team Ghostshell. I'm Ghostshell."
Eugen sent SCMagazine.com the login credentials to the TeamGhostShell Pastebin account that he said contained evidence that prove his identity, but SC cannot verify its validity at this time.
The alleged hacker, who asserted that he founded Team GhostShell on April 16, 2012, said he has observed the cybersecurity industry from the shadows and despite his many protests has never felt fully satisfied with the outcome of his projects.
Team GhostShell made its first data dump as a protest "against the arrests of other hacktivists and hackers that were caught at the time," including those from TeamPoison, Eugen said.
“My motivation at the time was mostly done out of frustration,” Eugen said. “There were so many entrapments going on, federal agents alongside their informants infiltrating hacker teams and using them in different ways made me so upset that I decided to create my own team where I could keep tabs on the people being affiliated with TGS,” he said
Before founding Team GhostShell Eugen was part of part of another hacker team called MalSec, which he claimed to have co-founded with a former lulzsec member on the network AnonOps at the beginning in 2012.
In Malsec, Eugen said he was in charge of all hacking operations while his partner was in charge of media relations until the cybergang parted ways.
“We had a falling [out] of sorts, I suspected that he was a fed and we parted ways,” Eugen said. “I took at the time all the hackers that I had recruited and personally trained. He kept the rest. Others left,” he said.
In 2012 the Anonymous-related hacktivist group took credit for leaking 1.6 million account details and records gleaned from dozens of organizations and businesses - in addition to NASA and the FBI, Team GhostShell claimed credit for attacks on Credit Union National Association (CUNA) and the Institute of Makers of Explosives (IME) under a campaign called “Project White Fox."
In 2015 the group reportedly launched cyber attacks against the Smithsonian photo contest website, Socialblade, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Exploratorium in San Francisco. It allegedly attacked Harvard, Princeton and other prestigious institutions, exposing, at the minimum, the email addresses, passwords, IDs and names of students and faculty.
Eugen told SCMagazine.com and other news outlets contacted that any attacks from his group have been suspended indefinitely.
