Good evening and welcome back to another post from ToBeSecured Wednesdays. We're a month away from the best month in relation to Cyber Security and privacy. If you're new to my blog, thank you for for tuning in and I hope you learn something and are able to share with you family, friends, and peers. I have so much loading for the month of October, given it will be National Cyber Security Awareness Month. Please make sure you subscribe to my blog, follow my Instagram page - ToBeSecured, and subscribe to my Youtube channel - ToBeSecured Cyber Tuesdays.
On today, I'll be covering a Russian who was arrested after offering $1 Million to a U.S. company employee for planting malware.
A 27-year old Russian man, Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov, entered the United States as a tourist and was arrested in Los Angeles after meeting with an unnamed employee of a undisclosed company based in Nevada on numerous occasions, between August 1st to August 21st, to discuss the plot. Egor offered $1 million in bribe to an employee of a targeted company for his help in installing malware into the company's computer network manually.
"On or about July 16, EGOR IGOREVICH KRIUCHKOV used his WhatsApp account to contact the employee of victim company and arranged to visit in person in the District of Nevada," the court documents say. He also asked the employee to participate in developing tailored malware by sharing information about the company's infrastructure.
According to court documents released by the US Justice Department, the malicious software Egor asked to install aims to extract data from the company's network, allowing attackers to threaten it later to make the information public unless it pays a ransom. He and his co-conspirators in Russia promised the employee to pay $1 million in Bitcoins after successfully planting the said malware and offered to launch a DDoS attack on the company's network to divert attention from the malware. "If CHS1 [employee] agreed to this arrangement, the group would provide the malware to CHS1 [employee] in either a thumb drive to be inserted into a computer's USB drive or an email with an attachment containing malware."
"After being contacted by the FBI, Kriuchkov drove overnight from Reno, Nevada, to Los Angeles. Kriuchkov asked an acquaintance to purchase an airline ticket for him in an attempt to fly out of the country," the United States agencies say. After getting arrested by the FBI, who was conducting physical surveillance of Egor and his meetings, he listed prior companies the gang had targeted and also revealed that each of these targeted companies had a person working at those companies who installed malware on behalf of the gang.
Egor has been charged with one count of conspiracy to cause damage to a protected computer intentionally.
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