Washington announced a $10 million reward for data on “Russian hackers”

Two Russians who are accused of committing cyber attacks are under sanctions from the United States and Britain. Washington announced a reward of up to $10 million for information about them.

The United States imposed sanctions against “FSB officer” Ruslan Perepyatko and “IT worker from Syktyvkar” Andrei Korinets, as well as the Russtroy-SK company, according to messages on the website of the country’s Ministry of Finance.

Washington accuses Perepyatko and Korinets of participating in the work of Center 18, which was engaged in “malicious cyber activity” aimed at “US government agencies.”

The US Department of Justice brought charges against these individuals on two counts: computer fraud (up to five years in prison) and conspiracy to commit wire fraud (up to 20 years in prison).

A reward of up to $10 million has been announced for information about the suspects and their accomplices.

According to the American side, both Russians participated in hacking activities at least from 2016 to 2020. Perepyatko was engaged in sending phishing emails from email addresses that imitated mailboxes of technology companies. They contained a link to malicious domains created by Korinets, there were at least 39 of them in total.

The British National Cyber ​​Security Center described the phishing method used by Center 18 hackers as follows: first, they identified “hooks” for their purposes, that is, topics or problems that were interesting to them; then they created email accounts similar to the victims’ contacts, or fake pages of “experts” on social networks, from which, for example, invitations to conferences or events were sent as “bait.” Moreover, the correspondence could become lengthy in order to gain the trust of the victim. In one of the emails, she received a malicious link, after clicking on which the entered data became compromised. The data allowed attackers to get into the victim’s accounts and steal information from there.

Russtroy-SK was on the sanctions list due to its participation in a network that provided funding to the Yemeni rebels, the Houthis. Its owner is identified as businessman Fadi Deniz (Ghazoghli), who helped the Houthi financial intermediary Said al-Jamal located in Iran.

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Britain also imposed sanctions against Perepyatko and Korinets. She calls Korinets's middle name - Alexey Doguzhiev. Both are classified as members of Star Blizzard, a group in which the British government claims the FSB is involved.

Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden said the group had attacked British parliamentarians, officials, think tanks and non-governmental organizations.

Regarding this situation, the British Foreign Ministry summoned the advisor-envoy of the diplomatic mission. The Russian embassy said that at the meeting “false accusations of cyber attacks were made.” In response, the Russian side stated that without concrete evidence, “there is not the slightest reason to trust these insinuations.”