The Russian legal system has convicted four individuals linked to the prolific REvil ransomware operation.
Russia’s Kommersant news agency said on Friday that the St. Petersburg Military Garrison Court handed Artem Zayets, Aleksey Malozemov, Daniil Puzyrevsky and Ruslan Khansvyarov prison sentences of 4.5 to 6 years on charges of using and distributing malware, as well as money laundering money.
“The investigation links the convicts to the hacking group Revil,” reads the version translated by Google report. “Their activities became known through a request from US law enforcement authorities, who 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 study
The arrests took place “in several regions of the Russian Federation in June 2021,” the news outlet reported.
Fourteen people were originally arrested in the REvil case about two years ago, when Russian authorities dismantled the ransomware operation after Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin had a conversation about cracking down on Russian extortionists.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) began investigating REvil after receiving information from “competent US agencies that were informed of a leader of a criminal group and his involvement in attacks on IT assets of foreign high-tech companies by implanting malware , encrypt data and extort money for its decryption,” reported Russian TASS in January 2022.
Members of the REvil operation are said to have carried out thousands of cyber attacks on US organizations, extorting hundreds of millions of dollars from victims.
Only eight defendants were ultimately brought to trial, four of whom have now received their final sentences under various articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation – illegal access to computer information and illegal circulation of digital currencies.
None of the defendants have pleaded guilty.