The first named threat actor in the Netwalker takedown is an affiliate charged with illegally obtaining more than $27.6 million from ransomware attacks.
Name: Sebastien Vachon-Desjardins,
Nationality: Canadian
Age: 34
Proffessional profile:
– More than 8 years of experience in the IT field
– Experience from troubleshooting & issue resolution
– Remote Assistance using Remote Desktop etc.
– Extensive Incident Management experience
Criminal history:
– Three years in prison (2015) for selling drugs
What can we learn from this?
The simple reality is that any individual with a criminal mindset and average IT-skills can potentionally make tens of million US dollars by becoming an affiliate to ransomware groups.
Conclusion:
1. We need to hunt down the cyber criminals and bring them to justice. It´s too easy to make an enormous amount of money by attacking organizations. We must make it less attractive by heavily increasing the risk of getting caught.
2. Organisations that gets targeted by cyber criminals must begin to report the crimes so that law enforcement get access to evidence.
3. Dont pay! There are companies such as us that can usually restore your data without paying ransom and possibly also find the threat actor.