Ransomware Negotiator Gets 70 Months in Prison for Aiding BlackCat Attacks
Summary: Angelo Martino, a 41-year-old former ransomware negotiator from Land O'Lakes, Florida, was sentenced to 70 months in prison for conspiring with BlackCat operators while representing five ransomware victims, passing them confidential details on victims' insurance limits and negotiation positions. He also colluded with Ryan Goldberg of Sygnia and Kevin Martin of DigitalMint to deploy BlackCat against additional U.S. victims between April and November 2023; Goldberg and Martin were each sentenced to four years, and law enforcement has seized $10 million in assets from Martino.
Bottom line: The person five victim organizations hired to reduce the damage was feeding their insurance limits and negotiating positions to the attackers to drive ransoms up, and two of his accomplices held incident response roles at security firms. When you hand a breach to an outside negotiator or IR firm, the insider risk sits inside the response itself.
Read the original at The Hacker News ↗
- Topics
- Ransomware
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