A court in the US state of Georgia found Cypriot hacker Joshua Polloso Epiphaniou, the first Cypriot national to be extradited to America, guilty of unauthorised access to a number of major US-based websites, stealing user data and demanding ransom.

The young man reportedly gained access to US-based websites and threatened to reveal stolen personal information belonging to users unless he was paid a large ransom. Resources compromised by Epifaniou included, among others, a New York-based job site, the site of a free online game publisher, a hardware company, and a sports news site owned by Turner Broadcasting System Inc.

The most famous story involving Epiphaniou: he used a bruteforce to gain access to the credentials of an employee of Ripoff Report, a website for anonymous complaints about individuals and businesses.

The hacker wiped negative reviews of companies from the portal for money so that bad reviews would not embarrass them in search engines. He and his accomplices were paid $3,000 to $5,000 to remove one review, and they “handled” at least a hundred complaints in total.
Epiphaniou is scheduled to be sentenced on 3 March.