Russian for ransomware crimes in connection with cryptocurrencies of $ 200 million charged

Russian for ransomware crimes in connection with cryptocurrencies of $ 200 million charged

A Russian man was charged by the US authorities because of his alleged connection to several ransomware programs that earned him and other attackers almost $ 200 million-a large part of it via crypto.

The victims of these ransomware attacks included hospitals, schools and police authorities.

$ 200 million of ransomware payments

The perpetrator-Mikhail Pawlowitsch Matwejew-was part of three ransomware gangs: Lockbit, Babuk and Hive. They received a total of almost $ 200 million from the victims after they had requested money of over $ 400 million Ministry of Justice

The Ministry found that Mateev was known online among several pseudonyms, including "Wazawaka", "M1X", "Boriselcin" and "Uthodiransomwa".

"These international crimes require a coordinated reaction," said deputy attorney in general Kenneth A. Polite Jr. from the crime department of the Ministry of Justice in the declaration of the DOJ. "We will not let up and the worst actors in the ecosystem of cybercrime impose consequences."

to Mateev's alleged crimes included, among other things, the help of using the Babuk ransomware against the metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C. in April 2021 and against a non -profit organization for behavioral medicine in New Jersey in May 2022.

In the first case, the criminal and his co-configurers threatened to make sensitive material accessible to the public, provided no payments were made. BABUK-Ransomware players have carried out at least 65 attacks worldwide since December 2020, requesting payments of $ 49 million and received at least $ 13 million.

In January 2022 the cyber security journalist Brian Krebs reported that Mateev allegedly claimed a connection to the Darkide-Ransomware groups Bloomberg . Darkside was responsible for a ransomware attack on the colonial pipeline in 2021, which earned the attackers forced payments of 63.7 BTC.

The role of crypto in ransomware

cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have become popular tools for ransomware attacks since 2021. In contrast to conventional bank transfers, hackers can easily remain anonymous if they request payments in Bitcoin, and such payments cannot be reversed or reclaimed by a bank or government.

according to Chainalysis ransomware income font in 2022 considerably to $ 456.8 million in the year 2021. Experts attributed the decline to a decline in the willingness of the victims to pay a ransom-especially since the sanction provisions against such payments by the US Ministry

In January the FBI announced that it had turned off the hive-ransomware network that members all over the North America and Europe.

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