A leading UK online safety charity has issued a “public warning” about a hacking community that is targeting vulnerable children for sexual abuse, self-harm and suicide.
The Molly Rose Foundation (MRF) said online networks linked to a global ecosystem labelled the Com were carrying out extreme exploitation, cyberbullying, violence and abuse – and called for a coordinated global response from governments, regulators, law enforcement and tech companies.
The warning follows the publication of a report by the online risk consultancy Resolver in partnership with the MRF, which was founded by the family of Molly Russell, a British teenager who killed herself in 2017 after viewing harmful content online.
“The growing threat posed by Com networks is the most chilling and urgent threat to children online today and it requires a swift and comprehensive response,” said Andy Burrows, MRF’s chief executive, who described the report as a “public warning”.
“These groups prey on children’s vulnerabilities to coerce and groom girls on gaming and messaging platforms, inflicting appalling harm and cruelty including acts of self-harm, livestreamed abuse or even suicide.”
The analysis details how members of the Com – short for “community” – are typically teenagers and adults in their early 20s from across continents who share interests in online gore, illegal sexual content, gaming, cryptocurrencies and meme culture. There is no formal recruitment or joining process for the community, which is known to gather on platforms including Discord and Telegram.
The report describes the Com as a “loose but sprawling ecosystem of overlapping internet cultures, subcultures, behaviours, networks, groups and claimed ideologies, within a sprawling ecosystem of harm”. Terms used by law enforcement agencies to describe Com activity include “nihilistic violent extremism” and “sadistic (online) exploitation”.
One case study cited by the report involved a mentally vulnerable adult being manipulated by a Com chat group into travelling to a remote location in another country and fatally setting themself alight on a livestream.
Com members focus on online communities, including those dedicated to self-harm and eating disorders, to find victims and have even created fake support groups for that purpose. Victims are targeted on gaming platforms, livestreams and direct messaging apps, as well as social networks.
Com constituents also include Scattered Spider, a collective that has been linked with hacks against the British retailers Marks & Spencer, Co-op and Harrods. In the UK last year, Cameron Finnigan, 19, from Horsham, West Sussex, a member of another Com-linked group, was given a nine-year prison sentence for possessing a terrorist document and encouraging someone online to take her own life.
Female victims are highly valued targets for predominantly heterosexual male Com members and are commonly subjected to sexual violence, while male victims are subjected to psychological harm and suicide encouragement. Law enforcement agencies in the UK and US have already issued public warnings about the Com.
Resolver said the threats posed by the Com ranged from child sexual exploitation and abuse to extortion, self-harm and severe harassment. The Com was largely comprised of 11- to 25-year-olds, the report said, who perceived themselves as socially excluded and were looking for a sense of community. Particular concentrations of activity were found in the US, Russia and Brazil. Sometimes victims of Com abuse become perpetrators themselves.
At the most extreme end of the abuse the majority of victims are children and young people in vulnerable situations, owing to factors including economic disadvantage, neurodivergence and a previous history of self-harm and abuse.
In line with other cyber experts, the report splits the Com into three groups, which are sometimes interlinked: Sadism Com, predators who carry out sexual extortion, grooming and child sexual exploitation and abuse; Terror Com, which promotes far-right or nihilistic ideologies; and Finance Com, which hacks big companies and other Com constituencies.
It said individuals in the Com pursued “power and infamy” through carrying out extreme harms within “clout-based” social groups spanning various online platforms. The ensuing psychological, sexual and physical harms were global in scope and could escalate quickly, sometimes within hours of contact with the victim, said the report.
Jess Phillips, the minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, said: “We will use every power we have to hunt down the perpetrators, shut these disgusting networks down, and protect every child at risk.”
