Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cybercrime

Russian Arrested for Recruiting Employee of U.S. Company to Plant Malware

A Russian national was arrested in the United States after attempting to convince an employee at a targeted company to deploy a piece of malware.

A Russian national was arrested in the United States after attempting to convince an employee at a targeted company to deploy a piece of malware.

The man, Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov, 27, was arrested on August 22 and appeared in court on Monday. He promised $1 million to the employee and was allegedly planning to flee the United States after being contacted by the FBI.

Kriuchkov, a criminal complaint and statements made in court reveal, conspired with others to recruit an employee at an unnamed company in Nevada, to convince them to install malware onto the organization’s network, in exchange for $500,000.

He arrived in the United States on July 28 on a tourist visa, after having previously contacted the employee to inform them of his arrival, but only revealed his true intentions several days after arriving in Nevada. Kriuchkov told the employee he was part of a group that installed malware onto corporate networks to exfiltrate data and then extort the victim organizations, threatening to expose the data publicly unless a ransom was paid.

The defendant told the employee that the previous victim organizations had paid millions of dollars to ensure their data was not leaked on the Internet, and promised to pay them $1 million after the employee remained reluctant to participating in the scheme.

Kriuchkov told the employee that the malware would provide him and his co-conspirators with access to the organization’s internal systems, allowing them to extract data from the network and use that data to extort money from the company.

The cybercriminals were allegedly also planning on launching a DDoS attack to divert attention from the malware.

Kriuchkov provided the employee with a burner phone, instructed them to use the Tor Browser to set up a Bitcoin wallet to receive payment, and told them to leave the burner phone in airplane mode until being notified that the money was transferred.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

The FBI physically witnessed some of the meetings between Kriuchkov and the employee, the criminal complaint reveals.

Related: U.S. Indicts Two Chinese Nationals for Hacking Hundreds of Organizations

Related: Developer of DDoS Botnets Based on Mirai Code Sentenced to Prison

Related: Man Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison for DDoS Attacks

Written By

Ionut Arghire is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek.

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Cybercrime

As it evolves, web3 will contain and increase all the security issues of web2 – and perhaps add a few more.

Cybercrime

Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus Group informed some customers last week that their online accounts had been breached by hackers.

Cybercrime

Zendesk is informing customers about a data breach that started with an SMS phishing campaign targeting the company’s employees.

Cybercrime

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft calls attention to a series of zero-day remote code execution attacks hitting its Office productivity suite.

Artificial Intelligence

The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 has demonstrated the potential of AI for both good and bad.

Cybercrime

Satellite TV giant Dish Network confirmed that a recent outage was the result of a cyberattack and admitted that data was stolen.