Two Perth men have been charged over their alleged involvement with a cybercriminal group linked to breaches of over 1000 organisations, including the European Commission.
Australian Federal Police said in a statement on Thursday that the pair had been charged with a combined total of 14 offences after search warrants were executed at properties in Hamilton Hill, Cottesloe and Mandurah.
Police alleged the men were part of the sophisticated cybercrime group TeamPCP, which is known for conducting software supply chain attacks, in which the group would corrupt legitimate pieces of software, often open-source, with malicious code.
The group was believed to be behind recent hacks of thousands of GitHub repositories dating back to March, often targeting developer tools which would in-turn impact downstream victims.
One of the most high-profile breaches attributed to TeamPCP was a breach of the European Commission.
In that breach, the group allegedly stole around 92 gigabytes of compressed data after gaining access to the bloc's Amazon Web Services account.
In its statement, the Australian Federal Police said investigations into the group started in April of this year.
"The AFP and FBI received information from multiple cyber threat assessment companies regarding a syndicate that allegedly inserted malicious code into software available on an open-source repository, which was then unwittingly used by other developers," the statement said.
"Police will allege infected software was then distributed into computer systems at other organisations across government, academia and the private sector. The software allegedly enabled the syndicate to infiltrate those organisations to steal or harvest sensitive data, including user credentials and authentication materials."
To date, the financial impacts are estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
AFP commander Graeme Marshall said the AFP remained committed to working with valued partners to identify, disrupt and dismantle criminal syndicates that enabled cybercrime on a global scale.
"Cybercrime knows no borders and is a growing threat globally, so by leveraging connections and sharing advanced policing capabilities with our partners, the AFP amplifies its impact by disrupting cybercriminals across the world," he said.
"Cybercrime syndicates are becoming increasingly organised and often operate like professional businesses, but our investigators are relentless in tracking down criminals who attempt to exploit digital anonymity to attack our community."
FBI cyber division assistant director Brett Leatherman said the arrests demonstrated the FBI's global reach.
"These men are allegedly members of the cybercriminal group TeamPCP, whose malicious code potentially compromised more than a thousand organisations worldwide," Assistant Director Leatherman said.
"We are proud to work with the Australian Federal Police and the Western Australia Police Force to impose cost on criminal actors and combat the growing threat of software supply-chain attacks."
