Australia Charges Two Men With 14 Offenses Over TeamPCP's Supply-Chain Hacking Spree That Hit Trivy, LiteLLM and GitHub

Overview

Australian authorities have charged two Western Australian men over their alleged roles in TeamPCP, a hacking group blamed for a wave of software supply-chain attacks that compromised open-source developer tools including Trivy, LiteLLM, and TanStack packages, according to BleepingComputer. The Australian Federal Police (AFP), the FBI, and the Western Australia Police Force (WAPF) announced the charges on August 27, 2026, following an investigation that began in April 2026, according to the AFP’s press release.

What We Know

• The two men, aged 21 and 23, were arrested in the Western Australian cities of Cottesloe and Mandurah on August 26, 2026, according to BleepingComputer. The Record identified them as Ruben Ian Thomson, 21, of Cottesloe, and Louis Michael Gaebler, 23, of Mandurah.
• Thomson faces eight charges and Gaebler faces six, for a combined 14 charges, according to The Record and the AFP. Per the AFP’s charge list, Thomson (the Cottesloe man) faces one count of possessing data with intent to commit a computer offence, four counts of unauthorised modification of data, one count of supplying data with intent to commit a computer offence, one count of failing to comply with a section 3LA data-access order, and one count of dealing with proceeds of crime worth $100,000 or more. Gaebler (the Mandurah man) faces one count of possessing data with intent to commit a computer offence, four counts of unauthorised modification of data, and one count of supplying data with intent to commit a computer offence.
• If convicted and given the maximum sentence on every count, the men could face a combined 82 years in prison — 56 years for Thomson and 26 years for Gaebler, according to The Record.
• TeamPCP is described by BleepingComputer as “a loose-knit collective of threat actors who all frequent the same hacking forums, Discord servers, and Telegram channels,” rather than a traditional, cohesive group. The outlet reports the group injected malicious code into software hosted on open-source repositories, which developers then unknowingly incorporated into their own applications.
• High-profile attacks attributed to TeamPCP have impacted Trivy, LiteLLM, Telnyx, SAP, and TanStack packages, and the group has also breached the European Commission, Mistral AI, OpenAI, and GitHub, according to BleepingComputer. The Record independently reports the group targeted “developer tools including TanStack, Trivy and LiteLLM.”
• According to the AFP, FBI, and WA Police, malicious code distributed by TeamPCP potentially compromised more than 1,000 organizations worldwide, enabling the theft of more than 500,000 credentials and the exfiltration of at least 300 gigabytes of data, according to BleepingComputer and The Record.
• The AFP’s press release states that “the alleged compromise of a small number of trusted software components had a significant global impact” and that “the financial impact includes global remediation costs estimated to be hundreds of millions of dollars,” as BleepingComputer reports.
• The investigation began in April 2026 after the AFP and FBI received information from cybersecurity firms, according to the AFP and BleepingComputer.
• AFP Commander Graeme Marshall said “cybercrime knows no borders and is a growing threat globally, so by leveraging connections and sharing advanced policing capabilities with our partners, the AFP amplifies its impact by disrupting cybercriminals across the world,” according to the AFP.
• FBI Assistant Director Brett E. Leatherman said “these men are allegedly members of the cybercriminal group TeamPCP, whose malicious code potentially compromised more than a thousand organizations worldwide,” and that the FBI is “proud to work with the Australian Federal Police and the Western Australia Police Force to impose cost on criminal actors,” according to the AFP.
• WAPF Acting Commander Peter Foley said the case “shows the prevalence of cybercrime in our community and that cybercriminals live amongst us,” and encouraged businesses and individuals to report cybercrime “no matter the size,” according to the AFP.
• Investigators seized electronic devices and other evidence for forensic analysis during the arrests, and police allege the two men received cryptocurrency payments, in an undisclosed amount, for their involvement in TeamPCP operations, according to BleepingComputer.
• After the arrests were announced, both the threat-intelligence firm Flare and security journalist Brian Krebs published separate investigations tracing how reused aliases and other online activity linked alleged TeamPCP members to real-world identities, according to BleepingComputer.
• The AFP said further arrests or charges have not been ruled out as it continues examining seized evidence, according to BleepingComputer.

What We Don’t Know

• The exact amount of cryptocurrency the two men allegedly received has not been disclosed by investigators.
• Whether either suspect has entered a plea, or when the cases will next appear before a court, has not been reported.
• Whether the AFP’s ongoing review of seized evidence will lead to additional arrests, in Australia or elsewhere, remains unknown.

Background

The Machine Herald has tracked TeamPCP’s campaign since March 2026, when the group hijacked 75 GitHub Action tags and defaced Aqua Security repositories while compromising Trivy, and days later compromised a LiteLLM package that triggered 500,000 credential exfiltrations. The group resurfaced in May 2026 when it backdoored a Checkmarx Jenkins AST plugin for 31 hours. This week’s charges mark the first publicly announced law-enforcement action against alleged individual members of the group.