The UK National Crime Agency (NCA) has sanctioned 16 members of Russian hacker group Evil Corp and has identified its links to prolific ransomware group, LockBit.
The sanctions were announced on October 1, 2024. Australia and the US have also imposed sanctions.
This latest update is the result of phase three of Operation Cronos, a global law enforcement operation which first that took down much of LockBit’s infrastructure in February.
Evil Corps in the Crosshairs of Law Enforcement
This latest round of sanctions is in addition various Russian nationals from the group having been indicted or charged by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) in 2019, including the head of Evil Corp, Maksim Yakubets, and one of the group’s administrators, Igor Turashev.
In the October 1, 2024 announcement, Yakubets, Turashev, and seven of those sanctioned by the US in 2019 have also been designated in the UK by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, along with an additional seven individuals, whose links and support for the group have not previously been exposed.
The NCA has been investigating Evil Corp for a number of years and said that the crime group has extorted at least $300m from global victims including those within healthcare, critical national infrastructure, and government, among other sectors.
Evil Corp is a well-known financially motivated Russian cybercriminal group which was formed in 2014 and was responsible for the development and distribution of BitPaymer and Dridex, which it used target banks and financial institutions in over 40 countries, stealing over $100m.
Some of the group’s members had close links to the Russian state.
Commenting on the latest sanctions, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said: “I am making it my personal mission to target the Kremlin with the full arsenal of sanctions at our disposal."
“Putin has built a corrupt mafia state with himself at its center. We must combat this at every turn, and today’s action is just the beginning.”
He added that the sanctions send a clear message to the Kremlin that we will not tolerate Russian cyber-attacks - whether from the state itself or from its cyber-criminal ecosystem.
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