A Russian ransomware group whose leaders were indicted by the Justice Department in December is retaliating against the U.S. government, many of America's largest companies and a major news organization, identifying employees working from home during the pandemic and attempting to get inside their
A Russian ransomware group whose leaders were indicted by the Justice Department in December is retaliating against the U.S. government, many of America’s largest companies and a major news organization, identifying employees working from home during the pandemic and attempting to get inside their networks with malware intended to cripple their operations.
Ransomware allows the hackers to demand that companies pay millions to have access to their own data restored. A leaked May 1 FBI warning said ransomware attacks delivered “to U.S., county and state government networks will likely threaten the availability of data on interconnected election servers, even if that is not the actors’ intention.”
The hackers call themselves “Evil Corp.,” a play off the “Mr. Robot” television series. In December, the Justice Department said they had “been engaged in cybercrime on an almost unimaginable scale,” deploying malware to steal tens of millions of dollars from online banking systems. The Treasury Department placed sanctions on them, and the State Department offered $5 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction of the group’s leader.
Symantec said it had briefed federal officials on the findings, which are echoed by at least one other company monitoring corporate networks. The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency did not immediately respond to questions about whether it had seen the same activity or planned to issue a parallel warning.The malware, Chien said, was deployed on common websites and even one news site.
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