UK Cybercrime Journal: Hargreaves Landsdown Extortion Attempt by Bashe

Hargreaves Lansdown experienced platform outages in late 2025 and March 2026; subsequently the Bashe/"APT73" group claimed to have stolen 658,259 customer records and posted samples on Tor and DarkForums. Analysis shows the posted samples contain records previously seen in other breaches (e.g., Verifications.io, People Data Labs), and given Bashe's history of fabricating claims, the report assesses the alleged breach as likely fake — an opportunistic extortion attempt exploiting customer fear rather than confirmed data exfiltration.