Accused ‘Raccoon’ Malware Developer Fled Ukraine After Russian Invasion
Summary: A 26-year-old Ukrainian national, Mark Sokolovsky, is awaiting extradition from The Netherlands to the United States on charges he was the core developer of Raccoon, a malware-as-a-service infostealer marketed on Russian-language cybercrime forums from 2019 at $200 a month. The Justice Department says FBI agents identified more than 50 million unique credentials and forms of identification stolen with Raccoon, and Sokolovsky was arrested in The Netherlands on Mar. 20, 2022, after fleeing Ukraine in a Porsche Cayenne on Mar. 18 as able-bodied men were required to report for military service.
Why it matters: Raccoon's $200-a-month customers pulled in more than 50 million stolen credentials that were often resold to ransomware groups, and investigators tied the developer to the operation through a single operational security slip: a Gmail account linked to an Apple iCloud account.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
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