Russian Hackers Account For 74% Of Ransomware Proceeds

Cyber criminals with links to Russia set the pace for ransomware attacks, accounting for nearly three-quarters of revenue from online extortion last year, according to blockchain experts at Chainalysis.

Their analysis shows that ransom payments from victims are laundered through services primarily catering to Russian users. Individuals and groups based in Russia, some of whom have been sanctioned by the United States in recent years, account for the largest proportion of activity in several forms of crypto currency crime.

Chainalysis was able to follow the flow of money to and from the digital wallets of known hacking groups using public blockchain transaction records. This data has helped them identify specific ransomware strains to Russian cyber criminals using various criteria, including the sharing of documents and announcements written in the Russian language. Chainalysis say "a huge amount of crypto-currency-based money laundering" goes through Russian crypto-companies. 

According to their research, more than $400 million worth of crypto-currency payments went to groups "highly likely to be affiliated with Russia".

Analysts say they know which hacking groups are Russian because they display various characteristics, for example:

• The ransomware code is written to prevent it from damaging files if it detects the victim's computers are located in Russia or a CIS country.

• The gang operates in Russian on Russian-speaking forums.

• The gang is linked to Evil Corp - an alleged cyber-crime group wanted by the US

The research is further evidence that many cyber criminal groups operate either in Russia or in the surrounding Russian-speaking countries. However, the report only looks at the flow of money to cyber criminal gang leaders, and many of these run affiliate ransomware -as-a-service operations, renting out the tools needed to launch attacks to others. Consequently, it's not known for certain where the individual hackers who work for the major criminal gangs are located.

A major international operation was launched in 2021 to stop ransomware hackers, after many high-profile and disruptive attacks, like on Ireland's health service.  During this operation, suspected hackers were arrested in Romania, Ukraine, South Korea and Kuwait and US law enforcement agencies successfully recovered millions of dollars from the digital wallets of multiple ransomware criminals.

Russia has consistently denied that it was harbouring hackers and President Vladimir Putin told reporters at his 2021 summit with US President Joe Biden that his own intelligence shows "Russia is not listed in this ranking of countries that see the most significant number of cyber-attacks from their territory." However, Russian authorities subsequently announced they had made numerous arrests and dismantled the notorious ransomware group REvil at the request of the United States. This operation is  rare case of the US and Russia collaborating on cyber crime.

The Chainalysis report  highlights that 9.9% of all known ransomware revenue is going to Evil Corp, a cyber crime group which the US has issued sanctions and indictments against, but who are operating in Russia with apparent impunity.

While there are greater concerns over Russian hackers and their capabilities to disrupt victim organisations, they are not the only concern. Chainalysis has also reported that cyber security analysts at Crowdstrike have concluded that many attacks by ransomware are also affiliated with Iran, mostly targeting organisations in the US, the EU, and Israel and configured to conceal espionage activity.

Chainalysis:    TechHQ:    BBC:     Business Insider:     TEISS:   CyberNews:  

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