For years, the most dangerous hacking threats have originated from nation-state adversaries conducting espionage, Russian ransomware gangs targeting critical infrastructure, and governments using sophisticated spyware against journalists. However, a new phenomenon has emerged as a top global threat. This threat comes from a group of mostly English-speaking young adults and teenage hackers, whose activities span cybercrime, child abuse, and extremism.
These financially motivated young hackers have breached some of the world’s largest companies, tech giants, and government agencies. They have caused massive network damage and extorted hundreds of millions of dollars from wealthy corporate victims.
A company called Unit 221B, a New Jersey-based security firm, has positioned itself as one of the few organizations closely monitoring this subculture. The company has built a reputation for tracking these hackers and disrupting their operations, areas where others have often struggled or failed.
Investors have recognized the company’s work. Unit 221B recently raised a five million dollar seed funding round from J2 Ventures. A general partner at the firm stated that Unit 221B represents the missing puzzle piece in threat disruption and attribution.
Law enforcement has been slow to counter the threat from these so-called advanced persistent teenagers. These individuals paved the way for some of the most significant recent hacks, including the breaches of dozens of corporate giants through their Snowflake cloud accounts and the ransomware attack on MGM Resorts. In some cases, these hackers stole monumental amounts of personal data and disrupted company operations for extended periods, causing economic warnings for entire nations.
According to its leadership, Unit 221B has helped break the law enforcement deadlock in multiple investigations. The company has contributed to key arrests of high-profile hackers associated with groups like Scattered Spider and the wider cybercrime community known as The Com. This success is largely attributed to its flagship threat intelligence platform, eWitness, and its diverse team of hackers, engineers, and forensic specialists. The company has also assisted in recovering financial losses based on its investigative findings.
The five million dollars in seed funding will be used to expand and improve the eWitness platform. The goal is to help law enforcement and government investigators track and arrest malicious hackers more quickly. The company’s chief executive explained that they are focused on solving the problem of how the online threat landscape has evolved, enabling young people to cause significant harm at a speed and scale that did not exist a few years ago.
eWitness is an invite-only software platform that aggregates large amounts of threat intelligence from trusted sources, including police, journalists, and security researchers. The platform is designed to help investigators identify and track threats, collect and preserve information for building legal cases, and share intelligence. Private companies, including Fortune 500 firms, also use the platform to monitor how often their brand or industry is targeted by these groups.
Unit 221B’s chief research officer, a leading expert on English-speaking hacking threats, believes that The Com community is likely to continue growing on its current trajectory. The new funding will enhance the company’s ability to track these threats and support investigators in making arrests.