Two men from Western Australia were arrested and charged Wednesday for their alleged roles in TeamPCP, a notorious cybercrime group responsible for inserting malicious code into widely used open-source software in a campaign that compromised more than 1,000 organizations worldwide.
Australian authorities did not formally name the men, but Australian media identified them as Ruben Ian Thomson, 21, and Louis Michael Gaebler, 23. Police arrested both after searching properties, seizing electronic devices for forensic testing in the process.
Thomson faces eight charges, including four counts of unauthorized data modification, dealing in criminal proceeds worth $100,000 or more, and refusal to comply with an order to hand over device passwords. Gaebler faces six related counts.
The Australian Federal Police, which worked with the Western Australia Police Force (WAPF) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, allege both men were part of a syndicate engaged in “data intrusion, identity crime and cryptocurrency-based money laundering.” Investigators said further arrests have not been ruled out.
“These men are allegedly members of the cybercriminal group TeamPCP, whose malicious code potentially compromised more than a thousand organizations worldwide,” said Brett Leatherman, assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division. “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.”
Months of havoc
TeamPCP has been one of the most active cybercriminal groups in 2026. In late February, TeamPCP exploited a misconfigured workflow in Trivy, Aqua Security’s widely used vulnerability scanner, and stole a service-account token. Aqua replaced its credentials but missed some.
On March 19, the group pushed a malicious Trivy release through every distribution channel at once, placing malware inside thousands of automated build pipelines. Downstream victims included the European Commission and GitHub.