The US has identified and charged two Iranian men who it believes to be behind the SamSam ransomware attack that has run riot since 2015. The only issue is, US authorities don't have the jurisdiction to reprimand them at this time.
Believed currently to be in Tehran, the two men are out of US jurisdiction but the country's law enforcement is seeking alternative methods for their capture.
"Although the alleged criminal actors are in Iran and currently out of the reach of US law enforcement," the FBI said, the BBC reported, "they can be apprehended if they travel, and the United States is exploring other avenues of recourse."
"The allegations in the indictment unsealed today - the first of its kind - outline an Iran-based international computer hacking and extortion scheme that engaged in a 21st-Century digital blackmail," said US assistant attorney general Brian Benczkowski.
The ransomware attack is one of the most prevalent of its type in recent years, making headlines by holding up high-profile targets to their demands. American cities such as Atlanta, Indiana and New Mexico have been hit hard in particular, a hospital in Indiana was reduced to working by pen and paper earlier this year after their systems were hit by the attack. In 2016, a hospital in Hollywood was also forced to turn patients away and ultimately complied with the ransom demands and paid $17,000 in bitcoin.
It was misery in March 2018 for Atlanta which suffered a crippling attack on government systems. Five out of the 13 major government departments were reduced to pen and paper, including law enforcement who also lost a number of police records in the process. City council officials were resigned to sharing one clunky personal laptop between three, Reuters reports. How did they get access to so many systems? One researcher took to Twitter to highlight a glaring error.
When greeted with the splash page after the system has been infected, users are met with a lot of 'sorry' messages, presumably peppered to illicit a feeling of honesty, that the authors of the ransomware will actually pay up, which isn't generally advised.
The cost of the ransom increased exponentially as the years went by. At the start, the victim had two options, to pay 0.8 bitcoin for each infected PC or pay 4.5 bitcoin to get the decryption keys to all infected system's files. It later rose to 1.7 bitcoin for each system or 12 bitcoin for all, 40,000 in today's money. It's difficult to believe how long the SamSam project ran on, continually finding vulnerabilities that weren't properly patched.
It's reported to have made the authors hundreds of thousands of dollars; the US Treasury has also identified and is seeking capture of two Iranian men who helped convert the bitcoin into Iranian currency, the rial, after monitoring bitcoin wallet addresses associated with the outfit.
-
RSAC Conference 2025: The front line of cyber innovationITPro Podcast Ransomware, quantum computing, and an unsurprising focus on AI were highlights of this year's event
-
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei thinks we're burying our heads in the sand on AI job lossesNews With AI set to hit entry-level jobs especially, some industry execs say clear warning signs are being ignored
-
LockBit data dump reveals a treasure trove of intel on the notorious hacker groupNews An analysis of May's SQL database dump shows how much LockBit was really making
-
‘I take pleasure in thinking I can rid society of at least some of them’: A cyber vigilante is dumping information on notorious ransomware criminals – and security experts say police will be keeping close tabsNews An anonymous whistleblower has released large amounts of data allegedly linked to the ransomware gangs
-
It's been a bad week for ransomware operatorsNews A host of ransomware strains have been neutralized, servers seized, and key players indicted
-
Everything we know about the Peter Green Chilled cyber attackNews A ransomware attack on the chilled food distributor highlights the supply chain risks within the retail sector
-
Scattered Spider: Who are the alleged hackers behind the M&S cyber attack?News The Scattered Spider group has been highly active in recent years
-
Ransomware attacks are rising — but quiet payouts could mean there's more than actually reported
News Ransomware attacks continue to climb, but they may be even higher than official figures show as companies choose to quietly pay to make such incidents go away.
-
Cleo attack victim list grows as Hertz confirms customer data stolen – and security experts say it won't be the lastNews Hertz has confirmed it suffered a data breach as a result of the Cleo zero-day vulnerability in late 2024, with the car rental giant warning that customer data was stolen.
-
‘Phishing kits are a force multiplier': Cheap cyber crime kits can be bought on the dark web for less than $25 – and experts warn it’s lowering the barrier of entry for amateur hackersNews Research from NordVPN shows phishing kits are now widely available on the dark web and via messaging apps like Telegram, and are often selling for less than $25.
