A Russian man has been charged by US authorities for his alleged connection to several ransomware programs that have earned him and other attackers nearly $200 million, much of it from crypto.
Some of the victims of these ransomware attacks included hospitals, schools, and police departments.
$200 million in ransomware payments
The culprit – Mikhail Pavlovich Matveev – was part of three ransomware gangs: Lockbit, Babuk and Hive. Collectively, they secured nearly $200 million from the victims after seeking funds of more than $400 million, according to figures from the justice department.
The Department noted that Mateev was known online by several aliases, including “Wazawaka”, “m1x”, “Boriselcin” and “Uhodiransomwa”.
“These international crimes require a coordinated response,” Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said in the DOJ statement. “We will not hesitate to impose consequences on the most egregious actors in the cybercrime ecosystem.”
Some of Mateev’s alleged crimes included assisting in the deployment of Babuk ransomware against the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C. in April 2021, as well as a New Jersey nonprofit behavioral health care organization in May 2022 .
In the first instance, the criminal and his co-conspirators threatened to release sensitive information to the public unless payments were made. Babuk ransomware actors have executed at least 65 attacks worldwide since December 2020, demanding $49 million in payouts and receiving at least $13 million.
In January 2022, cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs reported that Mateev claimed affiliation with Darkside ransomware groups, according to Bloomberg. Darkside was responsible for a ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline in 2021, which netted attackers 63.7 BTC in forced payouts.
Crypto’s role in ransomware
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have become popular tools for carrying out ransomware attacks since 2021. Unlike traditional bank transfers, hackers can easily remain anonymous when requesting payments in Bitcoin, and these payments cannot be reversed or recovered by a bank or government.
According to Chainalysis, ransomware revenue fell noticeably in 2022 to $456.8 million, from $765.6 million in 2021. Experts have attributed the decline to a decrease in victims’ willingness to pay a ransom — especially as sanctions rules against such payments by the US Treasury Department made them riskier to drive.
In January, the FBI announcement that he had taken down the HIVE ransomware network, which had members in North America and Europe.
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