In an attack carried out in late June, hackers wiped computers in more than 60 countries. Since then, more than £8,000 in bitcoins has moved from the account used to receive the ransoms. This transfer gave credit to a message claimed to have come from the attackers. It claimed they were offering to decrypt infected computers for a one-off payment of £200,000.
But was this an elaborate smokescreen?
While the motive for the original attack appeared to be to make money through ransoms, experts believe otherwise. Researchers found that many of the features of the software used made it appear that the real goal was to cause widespread damage Whatever the motive, if caught, these hackers face up to 3 years in prison. A victim of a recent DDOS attack was the Anastasia Date Network of online dating sites. It’s Director, Lewis Ferro is following this investigation closely, stating
“The thing is, due to such criminal actions, many of our partners get affected along with us. We have over 500 partners on the territory of Ukraine, from small businesses to individual entrepreneurs, whose work has ceased due to the criminal actions in question. They have suffered financially, and so, each of them demands the resolution to this issue.”Other victims of these attacks included payment gateways, online stores and currency exchange platforms.
PayOnline, a payment service provider and also a victim of a recent DDOS attack are committed to seeing the case through. It’s lawyers are working closely with investigators of the Cherkasy case.
Possible groups involved have been identified including Ukrainian citizens Iatsenyuk Inna and Guy Grishnyak, yet so far, no arrests have been made.
The investigation continues.
