Long Sentences for Four Russian Nationals Linked to REvil Ransomware

The Russian justice system has sentenced four individuals linked to the prolific REvil ransomware operation.

Russian news agency Kommersant said Friday that the St. Petersburg Garrison Military Court gave Artem Zayets, Aleksey Malozemov, Daniil Puzyrevsky and Ruslan Khansvyarov sentences between 4.5 and 6 years over charges of using and distributing malware, as well as money laundering.

“The investigation links the convicted to the hack group Revil,” reads the Google-translated report. “Their activities became known from a request from US law enforcement agencies, which reported on the leader of the criminal group and his involvement in attacks on the information resources of foreign high-tech companies.”

A multi-year investigation

The arrests took place “in several regions of the Russian Federation in June 2021,” the news outlet reports.

14 people were originally detained in the REvil case around two years ago when Russian authorities dismantled the ransomware operation after presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin had a talk about cracking down on Russian extortionists.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) started investigating REvil after receiving information from “competent US agencies that notified about a criminal group leader and its involvement in attacks on IT resources of foreign high-tech companies by implanting malware, encrypting data and extorting money for its decryption,” reported Russia’s TASS in January of 2022.

Members of the REvil operation are said to have carried out thousands of cyber attacks on organizations worldwide, extorting hundreds of millions of dollars from victims.

Only eight defendants were eventually brought to trial, four of which have now received their final sentences under several articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation – illegal access to computer information and illegal circulation of digital currency.

None of the defendants have pleaded guilty.