Russian skilled basketball participant Daniil Kasatkin was arrested in France on the request of america for allegedly performing as a negotiator for a ransomware gang.
Daniil Kasatkin is a Russian basketball participant who briefly performed NCAA basketball at Penn State earlier than returning to Russia in 2019. In 4 seasons with MBA-MAI, he appeared in 172 video games earlier than he left the crew.
Based on French mediaKasatkin was arrested at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport on June twenty first after touchdown in France together with his fiancée.
The arrest was made as a part of a United States worldwide arrest warrant for his position as an alleged negotiator for a ransomware gang.
Kasatkin is now beneath custody whereas the US seeks to have him extradited to face fees of “conspiracy to commit pc fraud” and “pc fraud conspiracy.”
His lawyer alleges that Kasatkin will not be responsible of those crimes and that they’re as an alternative linked to a second-hand pc that he bought.
“He purchased a second-hand pc. He did completely nothing. He is shocked ,” his lawyer, Frédéric Bélot, instructed the media.
“He is ineffective with computer systems and might’t even set up an utility. He did not contact something on the pc: it was both hacked, or the hacker bought it to him to behave beneath the quilt of one other individual.”
Whereas the title of the ransomware gang was not disclosed, it’s reported to have been behind assaults on greater than 900 corporations, together with two federal companies, between 2020 and 2022.
This description carefully matches comparable language utilized by the Division of Justice to confer with the infamous Conti ransomware gang, which emerged as a successor to Ryuk in 2020 and shut down in 2022, following a knowledge breach.
Nevertheless, it was not beforehand reported that Conti breached any federal companies, although they’re linked to assaults on state governments.
Final month, French police additionally arrested 4 alleged operators of the BreachForums hacking discussion board, together with menace actors utilizing the alias IntelBroker and ShinyHunters.
Whereas cloud assaults could also be rising extra refined, attackers nonetheless succeed with surprisingly easy strategies.
Drawing from Wiz’s detections throughout 1000’s of organizations, this report reveals 8 key strategies utilized by cloud-fluent menace actors.
