US charges Russian 'Evil Corp' hackers with $100m banking scheme
Maksim Yakubets and Igor Turashev were also sanctioned by the treasury for stealing banking credentials from 40 countries
Maksim Yakubets and Igor Turashev were also sanctioned by the treasury for stealing banking credentials from 40 countries
US prosecutors have charged two members of a Russia-based hacking group that calls itself Evil Corp with masterminding a global banking fraud scheme that netted the unsubtly named gang more than $100m.
Two leading members of Evil Corp, Maksim Yakubets of Moscow and Igor Turashev from the Russian city Yoshkar-Ola, were charged with bank fraud and also sanctioned by the treasury department for developing and distributing the Dridex malware which stole swiped banking
credentials from more than 40 countries. In a statement, US treasury officials called Evil Corp “one of the biggest hacking groups ever”.
British authorities described the 32-year-old Yakubets as a supercar-lover who customized his Lamborghini license plate to read “thief” in Russian and ran his operation from the basements of Moscow cafes.
The US also entered Evil Corp, which also called itself the “Dridex Gang”, into its Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List. The Dridex malware developed by
the group was spread through a massive phishing operation, where targets were infected after clicking on internet links.“Treasury is sanctioning Evil Corp as part of a sweeping action against one of the world’s most prolific cybercriminal organizations,” said Steven Mnuchin,
the US treasury secretary, in a statement. “Our goal is to shut down Evil Corp, deter the distribution of Dridex, target the ‘money mule’ network used to transfer stolen funds, and ultimately to protect our citizens from the group’s criminal activities.”
US news outlets also said that treasury officials believed that Yakubets had committed other cybercrimes on behalf of the Russian government, as part of a scheme where Russian intelligence agencies recruit criminal hackers in order to target entities related to national security.
