Dutch Police Arrest ‘Reformed’ Hacker in Shiny Hunters Investigation

Autho­ri­ties in the Nether­lands have arres­ted a 23-year-old con­vic­ted cy­ber­cri­mi­nal on sus­pi­cion of ai­ding in data thefts and ex­tor­tions by the pro­li­fic hac­ker group ShinyHun­ters. In the days im­me­dia­tely fo­llo­wing the sus­pect’s arrest, re­mai­ning ShinyHun­ters mem­bers dra­ma­ti­cally es­ca­la­ted their at­tacks, stea­ling highly sen­si­ti­ve data from the FBI and ex­tor­ting the Rus­sian ran­som­wa­re group Cl0p.

Ac­cor­ding to three sour­ces fa­mi­liar with the mat­ter, the Dutch man arres­ted by autho­ri­ties this month is Pe­pijn van der Stap, a con­vic­ted cy­ber­cri­mi­nal from Al­me­re and Lelys­tad in the Nether­lands. Van der Stap was pre­viously con­vic­ted in 2023 in con­nec­tion with a string of data thefts and ex­tor­tions that pro­se­cu­tors said ear­ned bet­ween €1.5 mi­llion and €2.7 mi­llion.

At his trial in late 2023, van der Stap ad­mit­ted that he lived a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde exis­ten­ce, se­cretly using the hac­ker hand­le “ Um­breon ” to ex­tort vic­tims and post their data on En­glish lan­gua­ge hac­king com­mu­ni­ties like the now-de­funct Raid­Fo­rums and Brea­ched. By day, ho­we­ver, van der Stap was wor­king as a soft­wa­re en­gi­neer at the Ams­ter­dam-based cy­ber­se­cu­rity star­tup Ha­drian, while vo­lun­tee­ring at the Dutch Ins­ti­tu­te for Vul­ne­ra­bi­lity Dis­clo­su­re (DIVD), a non­pro­fit se­cu­rity re­search group.

Pe­pijn van der Stap’s alter ego “Um­breon” se­lling a da­ta­ba­se on Raid­Fo­rums, of­fe­ring in­for­ma­tion on 2.3 mi­llion peo­ple from The Nether­lands in Sep­tem­ber 2021. This user’s ava­tar is a de­pic­tion of the Po­ke­mon cha­rac­ter Um­breon. Image: KELA.

Van der Stap con­fes­sed to his data theft and ex­tor­tion ac­ti­vity, and was sen­ten­ced to four years in pri­son (one of which was sus­pen­ded). Du­ring his trial, van der Stap opted to re­main in cus­tody for a time rather than at home, sa­ying he could not find bet­ter treat­ment on the outsi­de for his on­going psy­cho­lo­gi­cal is­sues, which he clai­med in­clu­ded PTSD re­la­ted to childhood trau­ma. He was re­lea­sed from pri­son in De­cem­ber 2025…