Moises Zagala, Cardiologist From Venezuela, Accused Of Selling Ransomware To Iran

JAKARTA - A Venezuelan cardiologist, who taught himself computer programming, is selling software used by an Iranian hacker group to attack Israeli companies. The charges were launched by US prosecutors on Monday, May 16 while filing criminal charges against him.

Moises Zagala, 55, licenses his software to cybercriminals who then distribute it to extort victims for money. The charges were filed in federal court in Brooklyn, New York.

According to the allegation, Zagala is thought to have advertised the Jigsaw v. 2 on an online forum for $500 (7.2 million) and offered to sell the underlying source code for $3.000, the complaint said.

Breon Peace, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York said in a statement that Zagala boasted about successful attacks using his program, "including by malicious actors linked to the Iranian government."

Zagala faces two counts of attempted computer intrusion and conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. He lives in Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela, and has not been arrested by US authorities.

In late 2019, Zagala began offering another product, Thanos, to hackers in exchange for some profits from their ransomware attack. These allegations were made written by FBI agent, Chris Clark. Clark also purchased a license for the program and downloaded it to computers in the United States.

"Zagala in 2020 posted a link on a message board to a news article in Russian about the Iranian hacking group, MuddyWater, using Thanos software to target Israeli organizations," Clark said as quoted by Reuters.

US authorities in February described MuddyWater as a group of cyber-operators linked to Iran and said they had targeted various government and private sector organizations across Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. Iran called the accusations from the United Nations "baseless."

According to court documents, some of Zagala's clients were also directed to make payments to PayPal accounts registered for his Florida brother. According to his “brother” confession to the FBI, Zagala had been teaching himself computer programming all this time.