World’s Top Ransomware Hacker Identified, Chinese Hack US Infrastructure

ANN ARBOR – Law enforcement in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia today jointly named Russian national Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev as the alleged operator of the LockBitSupp handle and the organizational mastermind behind the notorious LockBit ransomware group, which has been on a multiyear hacking rampage exporting an estimated $500 million from its victims. Cybersecurity experts Richard Stiennon and Dan Lohrmann join MITech TV to explain the significance.

The law enforcement takedown, dubbed Operation Cronos and led by the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), has essentially neutralized the hacking group and sent ripples through the wider Russian cybercrime ecosystem.

Also Federal Bureau of Investigation director Christopher Wray said hackers affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party are constantly targeting US critical infrastructure, such as water treatment plants, the electrical grid, and oil and gas pipelines. Wray’s testimony, at a House subcommittee on China, came as the FBI also revealed it removed malware from hundreds of routers in people’s homes and offices that had been planted by the Chinese hacking group Volt Typhoon. Stiennon and Lohrmann provide analysis of this nation-state hacking too.