Yaroslav Vasinskyi, Ukrainian Man Faced With Multiple Charges Of Ransomware Attacks In US, 145 Years Sentence Await

JAKARTA – A Ukrainian man who was last year charged with carrying out one of the most severe ransomware attacks against US targets has been extradited to the United States. According to the US Department of Justice, the man, named Yaroslav Vasinskyi, was later brought before the court on Wednesday, March 9.

According to a court indictment in August 2021, 22-year-old Vasinskyi was accused of accessing the internal computer network of several of the victim's companies. He then deploys the Sodinokibi/REvil ransomware to encrypt the data on their computers. The US Department of Justice as reported by Reuters also accused Vasinskyi, allegedly responsible for the July 2021 ransomware attack against Florida software provider Kaseya.

The Ukrainian national is also charged with breaking into Kaseya over the weekend of July 4, 2021, and with REvil's accomplices, simultaneously distributing ransomware to as many as 1.500 Kaseya customers. The US Department of Justice also stated they had encrypted data and forced several Kaseya outlets to close for days.

As a result, most of the 1.500 businesses worldwide are out of business and face limited concerns. Even the disruption is palpable in places like Sweden, where hundreds of supermarkets have had to close because their cash registers didn't work. Meanwhile, in New Zealand, schools and kindergartens were forced to go offline.

Vasinskyi is also charged in the indictment with breaking into the victim's company and installing encryption software, developed by the core ransomware hacking group, REvil. The group, REvil, was also implicated in a ransomware attack against global meatpacking industry leading JBS SA, last year.

REvil usually directly handles the ransom negotiations and splits the profits with affiliates like Vasinskyi. This model allows notorious ransomware gangs to extort multiple companies to produce cryptocurrencies.

Vasinskyi was arrested in Poland in October last year, and indicted by the US Department of Justice late last year along with his Russian friend Yevgeniy Polyanin, 28, who is still at large.

Vasinskyi was transported to Dallas by US law enforcement authorities where he arrived on March 3, 2022. He could face a very long sentence of 145 years in prison.