Guilty plea entered by Russian hacker for laundering Ryuk ransomware proceeds

The U.S. Department of Justice has announced that Russian hacker Denis Mihaqlovic Dubnikov has entered a guilty plea for laundering the proceeds from Ryuk ransomware attacks against organizations in the U.S. and other parts of the world from August 2018 to August 2021, reports The Hacker News. Different criminal schemes have been leveraged by Dubnikov and his co-conspirators to conceal at least $150 million in laundered Ryuk ransomware payments, according to the Justice Department. Government entities, healthcare organizations, educational institutions, technology firms, and manufacturing companies are the primary targets of Ryuk ransomware attacks launched by Wizard Spider. Russian cryptocurrency exchange Eggchange, which was co-founded by Dubnikov, was reported by Chainalysis to have collected more than $34 million in cryptocurrency from illicit activities, including ransomware operators, scams, fraud shops, and darknet markets, from 2019 to 2021. Dubnikov's Eggchange is located in Federation Tower East, which also houses numerous cryptocurrency exchanges involved in ransomware-related money laundering schemes.