US offers $10 million bounty for info on Russian FSB hackers
The U.S. Department of State is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information on three Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers involved in cyberattacks targeting U.S. critical infrastructure organizations on behalf of the Russian government.
The three individuals, Marat Valeryevich Tyukov, Mikhail Mikhailovich Gavrilov, and Pavel Aleksandrovich Akulov, are part of the FSB’s Center 16 or Military Unit 71330, which is tracked as Berserk Bear, Blue Kraken, Crouching Yeti, Dragonfly, and Koala Team.
In March 2022, the three FBS officers were also charged for their involvement in a campaign that took place between 2012 and 2017, targeting U.S. government agencies, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as well as energy companies like Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, which operates a nuclear power plant in Burlington, Kansas.
“For information on three Russian FSB officers who conducted malicious cyber activities against U.S. critical infrastructure on behalf of the Russian government. These officers also targeted more than 500 foreign energy companies in 135 other countries,” the State Department tweeted on Tuesday.
“If you have information on their activities, contact Rewards for Justice via the Tor-based tips-reporting channel [..] You could be eligible for a reward and relocation.”
More recently, as the FBI warned in August, they exploited the CVE-2018-0171 vulnerability in end-of-life Cisco networking devices over the past year to breach companies across U.S. critical infrastructure sectors by remotely executing arbitrary code on unpatched devices.
Cisco, which first detected CVE-2018-0171 attacks almost four years ago, in November 2021, updated its advisory and urged network admins and security teams to patch their devices against attacks as soon as possible.
The networking giant’s cybersecurity division, Cisco Talos, reported that the Russian state-sponsored hacking group has been aggressively exploiting this security vulnerability to breach unpatched devices belonging to telecommunications, higher education, and manufacturing organizations across North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
The same Russian threat group is known for attacking U.S. state, local, territorial, and tribal (SLTT) government organizations and aviation entities over the last decade.
In June, the U.S. State Department also announced a reward of up to $10 million for information on state hackers tied to the RedLine infostealer malware operation and its suspected creator, Russian national Maxim Alexandrovich Rudometov.
46% of environments had passwords cracked, nearly doubling from 25% last year.
Get the Picus Blue Report 2025 now for a comprehensive look at more findings on prevention, detection, and data exfiltration trends.
Source link