US charges Russian for infecting 80,000 freelancers with malware

A Russian national, Searzhudin Tamirlanovich Aktulaev, has been indicted for conducting a phishing campaign between June 2016 and November 2017 that infected approximately 80,000 freelancers with TVRAT and DarkVNC malware. The attacker used 255 fake accounts on a freelance platform to send malicious Excel attachments containing macros, which downloaded malware enabling remote access via TeamViewer and VNC Viewer. The malware exfiltrated stolen data, including e-commerce credentials and personally identifiable information, to command-and-control servers paid for with virtual currency, with thousands of infected systems in the U.S., particularly in the Northern District of California.

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