“This action is the culmination of complex and long running international investigations into J.P. Morgan and his criminal network”
According to the National Crime Agency (NCA), the culmination of an international operation has happened as Maksim Silnikau, a Belarusian cybercriminal known as “J.P. Morgan”, “xxx” and “lansky” who was arrested in July, has been extradited to the US. He was arrested in Spain, and was sent to the United States from Poland to face cybercrime charges.
J.P. was known for a wide variety of cyber activities, stretching all the way back to 2011. He has been known to undertake extortion scams, by gaining access to user’s webcams and demanding payment for their devices to be returned. He and his network is also credited with the development and distribution of the Angler Exploit kit, which was designed to deliver malware to web servers by purchasing advertising space on their site. An attacker suing this methodology would also be able to distribute malware further by hijacking the site itself and deplying malicious downloads or links.
However, he has one more legacy that has transformed the way that cyber criminals have operated for nearly 15 years: RaaS!
Ransomware as a Service, known in the industry as RaaS, is the process of offering your ransomware capabilities as a service someone is able to buy. Not only does this bring in incredible money for the person running the service (fees, and often a percentage of the ransom money itself), but the user of the service is able to make a profit as well.
It also reduces the barrier to entry of cybercrime to almost nothing. Instead of having to spend a significant amount of time and money on building a sophsticated new piece of malware, a wannabe hacker is able to pay a fee, and the experts will do all the work for you.
J.P. is credited with running the first RaaS business model back in 2011 with his software Reveton, which powered his extortion schemes and made a reported $400,000 dollars a month for 3 years.
This arrest, unfortunatley, likely won’t make the world a safer place. He has a whole team behind him who will be able to pick up the slack and continue the 24/7 cyber barrage. Let me know what you think.
“They hid behind online aliases and engaged in complex, far-reaching cyber fraud schemes to compromise victim devices and steal sensitive personal information”