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His name is Maksim Yakubets and at just 33 years old, this hacker of Ukrainian origin has become a nuisance for countries like the United States and the United Kingdom. He became known worldwide when in December last year, the FBI offered a reward of five million dollars (more than 4,245,000 euros) for information leading to his capture. The highest reward ever offered by a suspected cybercriminal.

Leader of the Russian hacking group called Evil Corp, whose latest misdeed has been, according to media such as Bleeping Computer, the massive hack of Garmin (which caused users to be unable to access services such as monitoring physical activity or downloading flight plans for pilots, Yakubets seems to have an eye on Spain .

The hacker has a long history of using malware to steal fortunes from companies around the world . Last year, the feds brought charges against him for his key role in two hacking and bank fraud schemes that targeted dozens of victims since 2009.

Yakubets and other hackers such as Igor Turashev used Trojans to steal banking information from computers and then divert money from bank accounts, companies, municipalities, and other targets. The figure is estimated to exceed $ 70 million in the United States alone .

"For more than a decade, Maksim Yakubets and Igor Turashev ran one of the most sophisticated transnational cybercrime syndicates in the world ," US Attorney Brady said in a statement. "By deploying 'Bugat' malware, also known as 'Cridex' and 'Dridex', these cybercriminals targeted individuals and businesses in Western Pennsylvania and around the world in one of the most widespread malware campaigns we've ever encountered ", Add.

Links with the Kremlin

US Treasury officials say Yakubets has provided "direct assistance to the Russian government" by acquiring confidential documents for the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), the successor to the KGB. It was also said that it could be part of a scheme in which Russian intelligence agencies recruit criminals to hack national security targets.

Yakubets also has alleged ties to the Kremlin, according to media such as the New York Post or the Daily Mail, he worked for the FSB in 2017 and applied for a license the following year to work with classified information from the Russian intelligence agency, US officials said. in December.

Showing his fortune, the hacker spent more than $ 300,000 on his wedding to a businesswoman named Alyona Benderskaya, held at a luxurious golf club near Moscow, which featured the appearance of Russian singer Leonid Agutin. A link that links him even more with the Russian Government since Yakubets father-in-law is a former officer of an elite special forces unit of the FSB, Eduard Bendersky.

According to RadioFreeEurope, a broadcasting organization financed and supervised by the United States government, Benderskaya is one of the founders of several companies called Vympel-Aktiv and Vympel-Protekt, linked to an FSB center known for counterterrorism and anti-terrorism operations. foreign sabotage.

To further fuel the myth around the world's largest cybercriminal, several British media described him as an untouchable in Moscow. Able to walk the streets of the capital of Russia spinning with the car, together with the police, with total impunity. In addition, the license plate of his car, a custom Lamborghini Huracán not discreet that costs around $ 250,000, is a declaration of intent, sporting the word 'thief' in Russian.

First Garmin, then Spain

The hacker group Evil Corp, whose name refers to a popular culture rhetorical figure that describes an unethical corporation (common in the science fiction genre and popularized by the Mr. Robot series), is responsible for the ransomware WastedLocker, a malicious program that hijacked Garmin company's systems last July. In addition, the group requested a 10 million dollar ransom from the company in order to recover its systems.

This cyberattack meant a temporary interruption of the synchronization service that lasted several days, but did not affect user data (activity, personal or banking information), according to the sports technology company.

Now, as the cybersecurity company ESET discovered after an analysis of WastedLocker activity, Spain is the main victim of cyberattacks, with 82% of threats , well ahead of the United States (with 8% of attacks) and China (with 5%). Factors such as the increased incidence of teleworking and insecure connections in remote access through Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) may have tipped the balance against us.

The cybersecurity company, after reviewing where the latest ransomware detections have been made by its protection tools, confirms that it had not detected any ransom note among the Spanish computers they tried to infect.

Garmin gives in to blackmail

Several US media such as BleepingComputer claim to have proof that Garmin most likely paid the ten million dollars of the ransom in order to recover its services. They claim to have had access to an executable created by Garmin's IT (Computing and Information Technology) department which, as a restoration package, includes several security software installers, a decryption key, a decryptor specific for the ransomware and a script to run them.

Considering that WastedLocker has no known weaknesses in its encryption algorithm, the conclusion is obvious, to get a working decryption key Garmin must have paid the ransom to cybercriminals. For its part, Sky News categorically confirms the payment of the ransom through a trading platform for ransomware attacks called Arete IR, thus avoiding making payments directly as it could lead to legal problems.

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