Ukrainian hacker sentenced to 13 years in prison in the US
The defendant in the REvil cyberattack case was found guilty of participating in more than 2,500 attacks
A US court has handed down a guilty verdict against a Ukrainian citizen in the case of cyberattacks by the well-known hacker group REvil. The 24-year-old man was sentenced to 13 years and 7 months in prison and fined $16 million for participating in more than 2,500 attacks using ransomware.
Source. This was reported by Deutsche Welle with reference to the US Department of Justice.
The convict was detained in 2021 in Poland as part of a global operation against hacker groups that carried out ransomware attacks. In 2022, he was extradited to the United States, where he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud, money laundering and damage to protected computers.
According to Deputy Attorney General Nicole Argentieri, the convict and his accomplices hacked into thousands of computers around the world and encrypted them with ransomware, then demanded ransoms of more than $700 million.
They threatened to publish their victims' data if they refused to pay the ransom.
The crimes committed by REvil include the attack on the US software developer Kaseya in 2021, which had large-scale consequences and affected a large number of companies in at least 17 countries.
Among other things, as a result of this cyberattack, the Swedish supermarket chain Coop was forced to temporarily close most of its branches due to failures in the cash register system.
REvil hackers operated from Russia. In November 2021, the US blacklisted REvil hackers from Russia and Ukraine. In January 2022, Russia announced that it had shut down REvil at the request of the United States.
As a reminder, the Czech Republic recently accused Russia of preparing sabotage on the European railway. In addition to the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, and Italy have also experienced hacker attacks on railway systems.
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