Category Archives: Ransomware

Canada Fines Cybercrime Friendly Cryptomus $176M

October 22, 2025
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Financial regulators in Canada this week levied $176 million in fines against Cryptomus, a digital payments platform that supports dozens of Russian cryptocurrency exchanges and websites hawking cybercrime services. The penalties for violating Canada’s anti money-laundering laws come ten months after KrebsOnSecurity noted that Cryptomus’s Vancouver street address was home to dozens of foreign currency dealers, money transfer businesses, and cryptocurrency exchanges — none of which were physically located there.

ShinyHunters Wage Broad Corporate Extortion Spree

October 7, 2025
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A cybercriminal group that used voice phishing attacks to siphon more than a billion records from Salesforce customers earlier this year has launched a website that threatens to publish data stolen from dozens of Fortune 500 firms if they refuse to pay a ransom. The group also claimed responsibility for a recent breach involving Discord user data, and for stealing terabytes of sensitive files from thousands of customers of the enterprise software maker Red Hat.

Feds Tie ‘Scattered Spider’ Duo to $115M in Ransoms

September 24, 2025
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U.S. prosecutors last week levied criminal hacking charges against 19-year-old U.K. national Thalha Jubair for allegedly being a core member of Scattered Spider, a prolific cybercrime group blamed for extorting at least $115 million in ransom payments from victims. The charges came as Jubair and an alleged co-conspirator appeared in a London court to face accusations of hacking into and extorting several large U.K. retailers, the London transit system, and healthcare providers in the United States.

KrebsOnSecurity in New ‘Most Wanted’ HBO Max Series

August 8, 2025
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A new documentary series about cybercrime airing next month on HBO Max features interviews with Yours Truly. The four-part series follows the exploits of Julius Kivimäki, a prolific Finnish hacker recently convicted of leaking tens of thousands of patient records from an online psychotherapy practice while attempting to extort the clinic and its patients.

Who Got Arrested in the Raid on the XSS Crime Forum?

August 6, 2025
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On July 22, 2025, the European police agency Europol said a long-running investigation led by the French Police resulted in the arrest of a 38-year-old administrator of XSS, a Russian-language cybercrime forum with more than 50,000 members. The action has triggered an ongoing frenzy of speculation and panic among XSS denizens about the identity of the unnamed suspect, but the consensus is that he is a pivotal figure in the crime forum scene who goes by the hacker handle “Toha.” Here’s a deep dive on what’s knowable about Toha, and a short stab at who got nabbed.

UK Arrests Four in ‘Scattered Spider’ Ransom Group

July 10, 2025
53 Comments

Authorities in the United Kingdom this week arrested four alleged members of “Scattered Spider,” a prolific data theft and extortion group whose recent victims include multiple airlines and the U.K. retail chain Marks & Spencer.

Alleged ‘Scattered Spider’ Member Extradited to U.S.

April 30, 2025
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A 23-year-old Scottish man thought to be a member of the prolific Scattered Spider cybercrime group was extradited last week from Spain to the United States, where he is facing charges of wire fraud, conspiracy and identity theft. U.S. prosecutors allege Tyler Robert Buchanan and co-conspirators hacked into dozens of companies in the United States and abroad, and that he personally controlled more than $26 million stolen from victims.

Alleged Co-Founder of Garantex Arrested in India

March 11, 2025
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Authorities in India today arrested the alleged co-founder of Garantex, a cryptocurrency exchange sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2022 for facilitating tens of billions of dollars in money laundering by transnational criminal and cybercriminal organizations. Sources close to the investigation told KrebsOnSecurity the Lithuanian national Aleksej Besciokov, 46, was apprehended while vacationing on the coast of India with his family.

Notorious Malware, Spam Host “Prospero” Moves to Kaspersky Lab

February 28, 2025
27 Comments

One of the most notorious providers of abuse-friendly “bulletproof” web hosting for cybercriminals has started routing its operations through networks run by the Russian antivirus and security firm Kaspersky Lab, KrebsOnSecurity has learned.

Hacker in Snowflake Extortions May Be a U.S. Soldier

November 26, 2024
40 Comments

Two men have been arrested for allegedly stealing data from and extorting dozens of companies that used the cloud data storage company Snowflake, but a third suspect — a prolific hacker known as Kiberphant0m — remains at large and continues to publicly extort victims. However, this person’s identity may not remain a secret for long: A careful review of Kiberphant0m’s daily chats across multiple cybercrime personas suggests they are a U.S. Army soldier who is or was recently stationed in South Korea.