The Dark Overlord (also known as the TDO) is an international hacker organization which garnered significant publicity through cybercrime extortion of high-profile targets and public demands for ransom to prevent the release of confidential or potentially embarrassing documents.[1]
The group gained its initial notoriety through the sale of stolen medical records on TheRealDeal, a darkweb marketplace.[2][3] Major targets for the group included the extortion of Netflix, which resulted in the leak of unreleased episodes of the series Orange Is the New Black,[4] and Disney.[5]
In 2017, the group broke its trend of hacking and extortion, and began a series of terror-based attacks starting with the Columbia Falls school district in Montana.[6][7] The group sent life-threatening text messages to students and their parents, demanding payment to prevent the murder of children.[8] These attacks forced the closure of more than 30 schools across multiple school districts, resulting in more than 15,000 students being home from school for an entire week. During a senate committee hearing Senator Steve Daines (MT) referred to these attacks as "unprecedented".
On December 31, 2018, TDO announced the Lloyd's of London and Silverstein Properties "9/11 Papers" hack on Twitter, with thousands of incriminating documents[9][10][11] to be released in stages unless US$2,000,000 in bitcoin were paid.[12]
TDO was subsequently banned from many social media platforms including Twitter, Reddit, Pastebin and removed from the front end of an uncensorable blockchain called Steem/Hive. [13] Platforms unrelated to TDO such as www.hpub.org also had their social media accounts eliminated or followers deleted for serving as mirrors of TDO hacked documents.[14][15][16]