The US Justice Department on Thursday announced indictments against nine men for working for a notorious cybercriminal network with alleged ties to Russian intelligence and which held US hospitals for ransom and reaped over $100 million in payments.
It’s the culmination of a years-long FBI investigation into a ransomware gang that pledged allegiance to Russia as it launched its assault on Ukraine last year, and whose members have allegedly discussed hacking a journalist investigating the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny.
The nine men – eight Russians and a Ukrainian, according to the charging documents – remain at large, but US officials are hoping a multimillion-dollar rewards program run by the State Department can lead to tips on the men’s whereabouts if and when they leave Russia.
“The offer has been proven to be highly valuable to us and our operations against cybercriminals,” a senior FBI official told CNN.
The Treasury Department also slapped sanctions on the men, cutting off their access to the dollar.
It’s the latest move in an aggressive campaign by the US and its allies in the last two years to disrupt ransomware gangs in Russia and Eastern Europe that have knocked schools and health care providers offline.
Without any cooperation from the Russian government in rounding up alleged cybercriminals, the US Justice Department has relied on publicly exposing the hackers’ tactics, seizing their computer infrastructure if it is hosted by Western tech firms, and hoping that the hackers go on vacation to a country willing to extradite them to the US.
Despite the long odds of arrest, the US has multiple accused Russian hackers in custody, including a 42-year-old man whom a US judge sentenced to nine years in prison on Thursday for his alleged role in a $93 million securities trading scheme.
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