Cybersecurity Employees Plead Guilty To Ransomware Attacks
- Reference: 0180487877
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/12/30/1911201/cybersecurity-employees-plead-guilty-to-ransomware-attacks
- Source link:
Ryan Goldberg, a 40-year-old incident response manager from Georgia, and Kevin Martin, a 36-year-old ransomware negotiator from Texas, admitted to conspiring to obstruct commerce through extortion. Between April and December 2023, Goldberg, Martin, and a third unnamed co-conspirator deployed the ransomware against multiple U.S. victims and agreed to pay ALPHV BlackCat's operators a 20% cut of any ransoms received. They successfully extracted approximately $1.2 million in Bitcoin from one victim, splitting their 80% share three ways before laundering the proceeds. Both men face up to 20 years in prison and are scheduled for sentencing on March 12, 2026.
The Justice Department noted that all three conspirators possessed specialized skills in securing computer systems against the very attacks they carried out. ALPHV BlackCat has targeted more than 1,000 victims globally and was the subject of an FBI disruption operation in December 2023 that saved victims an estimated $99 million through a custom decryption tool.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-americans-plead-guilty-targeting-multiple-us-victims-using-alphv-blackcat-ransomware
'ransomware negotiator' should not be a job. (Score:5, Insightful)
You do not negotiate, just play it like your corporate facility just burned down. No exceptions, no payments, no more perpetuating the ransom business model.
Re: (Score:2)
> When you abuse a position of authority/privilege you should be treated harshly. Throw the book at them.
And which book should we have thrown at CEOs, long ago?
I mean if you're going to start counting actual harm from corrupt behavior painted 50 shades of fucking grey..
Your legacy. (Score:2)
> I think we should throw your mom at CEOs. That will keep them busy with venereal disease for a while.
I heard Slashdot new registrations shut down a while ago, but comments like this make me wonder what the policy is for fucking 12-year olds.
Not exactly The Slashdot Effect anyone wants to tell their kids about.
$400K (Score:2)
If they were verbally slick like Mitnick, they'd have committed other crimes. So they're not going to talk their way back into the security world. They won't have a trusted position to abuse, so I'm not sure what else they have to offer organized cracker gangs.
Hope the memories of that money serve them well when they're free and closing robot car doors for a living to make their restitution payments.
Maybe it's just me, but ... (Score:2)
> ... pleaded guilty in a Florida federal court ...
Very little shocks/surprises me if the sentence contains the word, "Florida". :-)