Nearly three months after being fully charged with the e-crime scheme, a 51-year-old two Russian and Jewish national is alleged to be the LockBit ransomware group’s developer.
In August of this year, Rostislav Panev was detained in Israel. He is alleged to have worked for the ransomware group from 2019 to February 2024, when the agency’s website infrastructure was taken in a law enforcement operation.
The United States will find you and take you to justice, according to US Attorney John Giordano,” Rostislav Panev’s extradition to the District of New Jersey makes it clear: if you are a part of the LockBit ransom crime.”
With more than 2, 500 attacks in at least 120 countries around the world, LockBit quickly developed into one of the most popular ransom groups. Roughly 1,800 of those were based in the United States.
Sufferers ranged from individuals to small businesses to foreign corporations, including law enforcement and government agencies, as well as hospitals, schools, nonprofit organizations, and government and law enforcement.
At least$ 500 million in illicit profits have been made by the syndicate, which has cost victims billions of dollars in lost revenue and expenses related to incident response and recovery.
Panev, who worked as a LockBit creator, was in charge of creating and maintaining the locker’s software, making an estimated$ 230, 000 between June 2022 and February 2024.
The Justice Department stated that one of the work that Panev acknowledged working on for the LockBit party was the creation of code to turn off antivirus program, to install malware on various computers connected to a target system, and to printing the LockBit ransom note on all printers connected to a victim network.
Panev also acknowledged that he had provided technical assistance to the LockBit class and written and maintained the malicious code.
In addition to Panev, six different LockBit people, including Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev, Ruslan Astamirov, Artur Sungatov, Ivan Gennadievich Kondratiev, Mikhail Pavlovich Matveev, and Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev, have been accused of being the administrator of the site.
Additionally, the Office of Foreign Assets Control ( OFAC ) of the Department of the Treasury has sanctioned Khoroshev, Matveev, Sungatov, and Kondratyev for their roles in the development of cyberattacks.