A Ukrainian national has been sentenced to four years in a US prison for decrypting stolen usernames and passwords and selling them on a dark web marketplace.
The man, Glib Oleksandr Ivanov-Tolpintsev, 28, was arrested in Korczowa, Poland, in October 2020. Authorities announced his extradition to the US in September 2021, after his first appearance in a US court. He pleaded guilty in February 2022.
According to court documents, Ivanov-Tolpintsev operated a botnet that he used to conduct brute-force attacks to decrypt stolen usernames and passwords. Ivanov-Tolpintsev claimed that the botnet could decrypt the credentials of more than 2,000 computers a week.
Between 2017 and 2019, Ivanov-Tolpintsev offered for sale on a dark web marketplace thousands of server credentials, for which buyers paid at least $82,648. The compromised servers were then used for various illegal activities, including ransomware attacks.
According to the US Department of Justice, the dark web marketplace listed for sale more than 700,000 compromised servers belonging to organizations in sectors such as government, healthcare, emergency services, metropolitan transit, accounting and law, and education.
Court documents obtained by darknet news website Darknetlive also showed that Ivanov-Tolpintsev was identified by authorities after they were able to link his email addresses to his phone number and address in Chernovtsy, Ukraine.
They identified Ivanov-Tolpintsev’s email addresses on receipts from vape shops, and also found an email address he used to communicate with a conspirator in China.
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