Long sentences for four Russians linked to REvil ransomware

The Russian justice system has sentenced four individuals associated with the prolific REvil ransomware operation.

Russian news agency “Kommersant” reported on Friday that the garrison military court of St. Petersburg sentenced Artem Zayts, Oleksiy Malozemov, Daniil Puzyrevsky and Ruslan Khansvyarov to 4.5-6 years in prison on charges of using and distributing malicious programs. and also in money laundering.

“Investigation links convict to hacker group Revil,” reads the Google translation report. “Their activities became known from the request of the US law enforcement agencies, which reported on the leader of the criminal group and his involvement in attacks on the information resources of foreign high-tech companies.”

A multi-year investigation

The detentions took place “in several regions of the Russian Federation in June 2021,” the publication reports.

14 people were initially detained in the REvil case about two years ago, when Russian authorities shut down the ransomware operation after Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin discussed cracking down on Russian ransomware.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) launched an investigation into REvil after receiving information from “competent US agencies that reported the leader of a criminal group and his involvement in attacks on IT resources of foreign high-tech companies by implanting malware, encrypting data and demanding money for their decryption “, reported Russian TASS in January 2022.

Members of Operation REvil are said to have carried out thousands of cyberattacks on organizations around the world, extorting hundreds of millions of dollars from victims.

In the end, only eight defendants were brought to court, four of whom have so far been sentenced under several articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation – illegal access to computer information and illegal circulation of digital currency.

None of the defendants pleaded guilty.