Governments struck back this week against members of ransomware operations, imposing sanctions on one threat actor and sentencing another to prison.
On Tuesday, the Australian, US, and UK governments announced sanctions against Aleksandr Gennadievich Ermakov, a Russian national believed to be responsible for the 2022 Medibank hack and a member of the REvil ransomware group.
In a
report by Intel471, we learn that Ermakov had extensive involvement in cybercrime, including as a ransomware operator and affiliate. The threat actor is also believed to be involved in both legitimate and criminal software development.
On Thursday, the
US government also sentenced Russian national Vladimir Dunaev to five years and four months in prison for helping to create and distribute the TrickBot malware and working with ransomware operations.
"Dunaev was a malware developer for the Trickbot Group, overseeing the creation of internet browser injection, machine identification, and data harvesting codes used by the Trickbot malware," reads the complaint against Dunaev and his co-conspirators.
The
DOJ press release also states that Dunaev also developed ransomware and helped deploy it to attack American hospitals, schools, and businesses in the USA.
Unfortunately, we also learned about numerous large-scale attacks this week, including an
Akira attack on Tietoevry, an attack on
water services giant Veolia North America, and an
attack on fintech firm Equilend, which LockBit claimed.
loanDepot also shared more information about the impact of its January 6th ransomware attack, stating that it
exposed the data of 16.6 million people.
