Hacker emailed the Ripoff Report CEO, shared a video accessing the exec's account, and asked for a $90,000 payment.
A Cypriot national has been extradited to the US to face charges of hacking into review portal
Ripoff Report, extorting the company, and selling access to its backend to a third-party.
The man, named Joshua Polloso Epifaniou, 21 years, and a resident of Nicosia, Cyprus, arrived in the US on Friday and is scheduled to be arraigned in front of a US court on Monday, July 20, where he'll be formally charged.
THE RIPOFF REPORT HACK
According to
court documents obtained by ZDNet, US authorities believe Epifaniou used a brute-force attack to gain access to the credentials of a Ripoff Report employee in October 2016.
The Cypriot then worked with an SEO (search engine optimization) company to remove bad reviews from the Ripoff Report website for the SEO firm's paying customers.
"Epifaniou and his co-conspirator removed at least 100 complaints from the ROR database, charging SEO Company's 'clients' approximately $3,000 to $5,000 for removal of each complaint," the US Department of Justice said in a
press release on Saturday.
