Pierluigi Paganini
December 20, 2024
The US Department of Justice sentenced the Ukrainian national Mark Sokolovsky (28) for his role in the distribution of the Raccoon Infostealer malware.
“Ukrainian national Mark Sokolovsky was sentenced today to 60 months in federal prison for one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.” reads the DoJ’s press release. “As part of his plea in October, Sokolovsky agreed to forfeit $23,975 and pay at least $910,844.61 in restitution.”
In October, the Ukrainian national Mark Sokolovsky pleaded guilty in a US court to operating the Raccoon Infostealer. In October 2020, the US Justice Department charged Sokolovsky with computer fraud for allegedly infecting millions of computers with the Raccoon Infostealer.
The man was held in the Netherlands, and he was charged for his alleged role in the international cybercrime operation known as Raccoon Infostealer. He appealed the decision of a Dutch Court for granting his extradition to the United States, but he was finally extradited to the US from the Netherlands to appear in a US court.
The Raccoon stealer was first spotted in April 2019, it was designed to steal victims’ credit card data, email credentials, cryptocurrency wallets, and other sensitive data.
Raccoon is offered for sale as a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) that implements an easy-to-use automated backend panel, operators also offer bulletproof hosting and 24/7 customer support in both Russian and English. The price of the Raccoon service is $200 per month to use.
The Raccoon stealer is written in C++ by Russian-speaking developers who initially promoted it exclusively on Russian-speaking hacking forums. The malware is now promoted on English-speaking hacking forums, it works on both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems.
The analysis of the logs for sale in the underground community allowed the experts to estimate that Raccoon infected over 100,000 users worldwide at the time of its discovery.
The list of targeted applications includes cryptocurrency apps for major currencies (Electrum, Ethereum, Exodus, Jaxx, and Monero), popular browsers (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Opera, Vivaldi, Waterfox, SeaMonkey, UC Browser) and email client like Thunderbird, Outlook, and Foxmail.
Dutch authorities arrested Sokolovsky in March 2022, concurrent with his arrest, the FBI and law enforcement partners in Italy and the Netherlands dismantled the C2 infrastructure used by the Raccoon Infostealer operation.
FBI identified more than 50 million unique credentials and forms of identification (email addresses, bank accounts, cryptocurrency addresses, credit card numbers, etc.) in the stolen data. While the exact number of victims has yet to be verified, experts believe that millions of potential victims around the world were targeted by the operation.
The credentials appear to include over four million email addresses. The United States does not believe it is in possession of all the data stolen by Raccoon Infostealer and continues to investigate.
Authorities dismantled Raccoon Stealer’s infrastructure upon Sokolovsky’s arrest, but the MaaS has since resurfaced.
In October, Sokolovsky was charged with computer fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and aggravated identity theft.
“Mark Sokolovsky was a key player in an international criminal conspiracy that victimized countless individuals by administering malware which made it cheaper and easier for even amateurs to commit complex cybercrimes,” said U.S. Attorney Jaime Esparza for the Western District of Texas. “Today’s outcome is the result of tireless investigative efforts by multiple law enforcement agencies in several countries and we reiterate our thanks to our international partners for their essential work. My office will not stop in its efforts to hold cybercriminals accountable for their misdeeds.”
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