A U.S. court has sentenced Latvian hacker Deniss Zolotarjovs to more than eight years in prison following his conviction for carrying out ransomware attacks.
The Justice Department accused the hacker of working for a notorious Russian ransomware gang called Karakurt, which was led by former leaders of the Akira and Conti ransomware gangs, who were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury for their alleged links to Russian intelligence. Prosecutors said members of Karakurt targeted U.S. government entities with attacks that disrupted 911 emergency dispatch systems, and also stole children’s health information. Zolotarjovs was responsible for “escalating pressure” on victims who resisted the gang’s ransom demands, the DOJ said.
Read more…
Source: TechCrunch News
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- China remains embedded in US energy networks ‘for the purpose of taking it down’
February 17, 2026
Three new threat groups began targeting critical infrastructure last year, while a well-known Beijing-backed crew – Volt Typhoon – continued to compromise cellular gateways and routers, and then break into US electric, oil, and gas companies in 2025, according to Dragos’ annual threat report published on Tuesday. Dragos specializes in operational technology (OT) security, and as ...
- OpenClaw AI agents targeted by infostealer malware for the first time
February 17, 2026
Thanks to its overnight success and widespread adoption, OpenClaw has painted a large target on its back and is now being attacked by infostealers, after security researchers Hudson Rock claimed to have seen a first-of-its-kind attack in the wild. OpenClaw (previously known as Clawdbot and Moltbot) is an open source AI assistant software designed to actually ...
- China-linked snoops have been exploiting Dell 0-day since mid-2024, using ‘ghost NICs’ to avoid detection
February 17, 2026
China-linked attackers exploited a maximum-severity hardcoded-credential bug in Dell RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines as a zero-day since at least mid-2024. It’s all part of a long-running effort to backdoor infected machines for long-term access, according to Google’s Mandiant incident response team. The US government and Google first warned about this campaign last year after detecting Brickstorm ...
- Critical Vulnerabilities in Ivanti EPMM Exploited
February 17, 2026
Two critical zero-day vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-1281 and CVE-2026-1340) affecting Ivanti Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM) are being actively exploited in the wild, affecting enterprise mobile fleets and corporate networks. These vulnerabilities allow unauthenticated attackers to remotely execute arbitrary code on target servers, granting them full control over mobile device management (MDM) infrastructure without requiring user interaction or credentials. Read ...
- Indian pharmacy chain giant exposed customer data and internal systems
February 17, 2026
A major Indian pharmacy chain operated a flawed platform which exposed highly sensitive data of millions of users, experts have warned. DavaIndia Pharmacy, the pharmacy arm of Zota Healthcare, currently runs more than 2,300 stores across the country – however, its platform was bugged in a way that allowed unauthenticated users to create “super admin” ...
- Google patches first Chrome zero-day of the year
February 16, 2026
Google has patched a high-severity vulnerability in the Chrome browser which was apparently being used as a zero-day in the wild. In a security advisory, Google said it addressed CVE-2026-2441, a “use after free in CSS in Google Chrome prior to 145.0.7632.75”. This bug, given a severity score of 8.3/10 (high), allows threat actors to execute ...