A 36 year old resident of Kiev, Ukraine and his wife along with three aquaintances have been arrested by the Ukrainian police. The alleged couple has been charged for crime including spreading malicious encryption softwares (ransomwares) to foreign companies and demanding ransom. The couple successfully affected more than 50 companies in just in Europe and USA. Reportedly the couple collected more than one million US dollars in ransom.
The activities of the hacker group were exposed by officers of the Cyber Police Department together with the Chief Investigation Department of the Ukrainian National Police, SBU officers and in cooperation with fellow law enforcement officers from Great Britain and the United States.
Attack Vector
Infamously, the route of all troubles start with malicious links on emails. The couple accepted that they used to launch the malicious url through spam emails. When the user clicked on spam emails, the users reportedly were lead to compromised sources on the web through which the malwares were silently installed on the target devices.
"Using malicious software such as Ransomware, the defendantsencrypted the data of the victims.
The extortion virus got on the equipment through spam emails.
Three performers received ransom for restoring access to data on their own cryptocurrencies."
Charges
It was also established that one of the defendants were on the wanted-list by law enforcement agencies of other states. The offenders have also been charged for using malicious softwares to steal bank card details of customers of British citizens.
At the expense of the victims, the attacker bought various goods in online stores and later resold them.
Police officers together with law enforcement officers from Great Britain and the United States of America conducted 9 searches in the homes of the suspects and in their cars. Computer equipment, mobile phones, bank cards, flash drives and three cars were seized.
Criminal proceedings have been instituted and deeper investigatigations are being proceeded against the defendents.
Recommendation
In earlier posts, FBI issued warnings against malicious USBs being used to spread ransomwares. We recommend that users pay special attention to the spam emails that somehow land into their inbox. Though IT administrators continuously try to defend and protect organizations against such attacks, some malicious emails outshine the admin efforts. The key lies in vigilance and security education.
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