Some of today’s most dangerous hacking campaigns aren’t coming from seasoned nation-state spies or Russian ransomware gangs, but from teenagers and young adults, dubbed “advanced persistent teenagers,” who are breaching Fortune 500 companies, extorting millions, and disrupting critical systems.
New Jersey-based security company Unit 221B has been one of the few organizations tracking this subculture and helping law enforcement secure arrests where others have struggled. To fuel its mission, the company announced it has raised a $5 million seed round led by J2 Ventures.
General partner Christine Keung of J2 Ventures described Unit 221B as “the missing puzzle piece in threat disruption and attribution.”
The company’s flagship platform, eWitness, is an invite-only threat intelligence system that gathers data from law enforcement, journalists, and researchers. It helps investigators track malicious actors, preserve evidence, and disrupt operations. Fortune 500 companies also use the platform to monitor how often their brands or industries are targeted.
Unit 221B has played a role in several high-profile crackdowns, including operations against hacker groups like Scattered Spider and the loosely organized collective known as The Com. Its work has helped secure arrests, recover losses, and support investigations tied to attacks such as the MGM Resorts ransomware incident and breaches of Snowflake cloud accounts.
CEO May Chen-Contino said the funding will expand and improve eWitness, making it easier to respond to the rising wave of young hackers capable of causing “very high harm at speed and scale.”
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Chief research officer Allison Nixon, a leading expert on English-speaking hacking groups, added that The Com is likely to continue growing, and that the funding will boost Unit 221B’s ability to track and help law enforcement arrest these threats before they escalate further.
