Two brothers who destroyed 96 government databases in retaliation for being fired unknowingly recorded themselves plotting the attack — because they forgot to close the Microsoft Teams meeting in which they had just been let go. Muneeb and Sohaib Akhter, both 34, have pleaded guilty to charges related to the incident, with Muneeb since attempting to recant his plea in handwritten notes to the judge.
The brothers were employed at federal contractor Opexus when the company terminated them after discovering their criminal records, which included prior hacking and wire fraud charges. Their firing took place over a brief Teams call. What followed was hours of planning and executing their revenge campaign — all captured by the same Teams meeting they had failed to close, and later transcribed in a court document. “Still connected? Still on the VPN?” Sohaib is heard asking his brother. “Delete all their databases?” Muneeb responded: “We are doing petty shit now.”
In other cybersecurity developments reported in May 2026: Instructure, the company behind educational software Canvas, announced it reached an agreement with ransomware group ShinyHunters, who had disrupted Canvas across thousands of U.S. schools. Hackers claimed to have stolen records on 275 million students. Instructure said the data was returned and destroyed, though it did not confirm whether a ransom was paid.
OpenAI disclosed that two employees were affected by a supply chain attack on TanStack, an open source web development library. The company found unauthorized access and credential-focused activity in a limited set of internal code repositories but said user data and production systems were not compromised. All macOS users are required to update their OpenAI apps by June 12.
Separately, Owe Martin Andresen was arrested as the alleged administrator of Dream Market, once the world’s largest dark web drug marketplace, which shut down in 2019. U.S. and German prosecutors allege he laundered proceeds through gold bars purchased from a company in Atlanta. His arrest may close the longest-running dark web drug investigation on record, given Dream Market launched in 2013.
Source: WIRED