Three Suspected Members of Computer Crime Group in Custody for Malware Campaigns

Law enforcement personnel have arrested three suspected members of an international computer crime group for their roles in perpetrating malware campaigns against U.S. companies.

On 1 August, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in a press release that foreign authorities had arrested three alleged members of FIN7.

The arrests began in January 2018 when foreign authorities apprehended Ukrainian Fedir Hladyr and Dmytro Fedorov. Hladyr, who was arrested in Dresden, Germany, allegedly served as FIN7’s systems administrator and is now waiting for his trial to begin on 22 October. Fedorov, who was detained in Bielsko-Biala, Poland, is believed to have worked as a manager of FIN7’s black hat hackers and is currently waiting extradition to the United States.

The third arrest came in June 2018 when authorities arrested another suspected FIN7 supervisor, Ukrainian Andrii Kolpakov, in Lepe, Spain. He remains in custody there pending the United States’ extradition request.

Kolpakov wasn’t the only FIN7 member arrested in Spain in the spring of 2018. On 26 March, EUROPOL announced the arrest of another individual whom law enforcement determined to be a leader of the group. No additional information was available at the time of publication.

The U.S. District Court in Seattle has since unsealed indictments against Hladyr, Fedorov and Kolpakov.

Otherwise known as the Carbanak Group, FIN7 has been active since at least 2015. It’s targeted more than 100 U.S. companies in that span of time and stolen 15 million payment cards from thousands of point-of-sale (POS) terminals. Each of these campaigns began with spearphishing attacks that in time enabled them to compromise the POS machines.

Special Agent in Charge Tabb described the importance of these arrests in the DOJ press release:

The naming of these FIN7 leaders marks a major step towards dismantling this sophisticated criminal enterprise,” (Read more...)