Tracking a hacker who extorted millions through ransomware attacks - The Fifth Estate

As someone who has worked in IT for many, many years I just want to say this: Keep backups. Good backups. Follow the 3,2,1 rule. 3 backups, on 2 different types of media, with 1 extra backup off-site in the cloud. Backing up a single computer can be as cheap as a few dollars per month. You have ZERO excuse for not backing up your data. If you run a business that uses computers in some way, you NEED to have a backup of your data. If you keep good backups, you will NEVER need to pay a ransom, EVER!!! Get these criminals out of business by backing up your data!!!

How was he able to get a government job with a criminal record for drugs? Incredible

Registered nurse here, I worked for one of the biggest research/teaching hospital in the US and I witnessed this ransomeware thing first hand. We had no access to our charting system for about 2weeks which was no fun. Imagine having to care for 5 patients while doing everything without a computer, all of that during Covid. This was the scariest time of my nursing career because not just patients safety was at all time high but, nurses and most healthcare workers.

I worked for a company in the 90's that, in addition to the regular system backups, backed up all data every evening to two external drives locally, and two external drives for removal to two different off site locations that were driven off by two different employees every evening. These drives were not accessible by the network except for the backup process. If data needed to be recovered, it was first accessed by an independent user who could copy the drives to another computer for decryption and recovery, but the backups never touched the network. I am sure things have gotten easier now, but having a two physical drives in secure locations struck me as a good idea.

Wow His Greed level took him to the moon. He had over $20 M and still fishing for 300K smh. With that kind of money you could’ve gone in a different country and live a normal life until God calls him. I guess he wasn’t that smart after all.

I wish we didn't have the internet. We used to kick back and listen to music, faces not glued to our screens. '90's were good.

It’s shame if a company that gets hacked doesn’t tell it’s clients of a hack. Very dishonest and in the end helps the hackers.

Imagine you run a big company...and don't have any backups...

The Fifth Estate's investigation and presentation is beyond compare.

Want to avoid getting wiped out by ransomware? Do weekly backups, but dont override the previous backup. Keep all backups in "cold storage", meaning on removable drives etc so theyre not connected to any system, no internet and so on. Highly sensitive files you keep segregated in entirely separate systems and networks, each file it contains you have individually encrypted with a separate key, so if one is compromised the others wont be. This drastically reduces the footprint and potential damages that can result from a breach. I work in cyber security at Mandiant as full time cyber threat intel analyst and im also on the penetration test red team. These are just a couple of the things we recommend to all our clients

Congratulations to law enforcement and the cooperation demonstrated. The governments around the world and the respective criminal justice systems must do everything possible to manage this criminal cancer.

Lives may have been lost when he hacked health care systems! He needs LIFE IN PRISON!!!

If he were truly remorseful he would have cooperated fully by naming his co-conspirators. He would have tried to help the current victims. He felt no remorse other than regretting that he was caught.

Let’s hope he doesn’t have access to a computer in Prison!

Commendable documentary by The Fifth Estate.

The punishment for this should be VERY severe.

There needs to be more of this kind of unified front against these types of cyber criminals.

43:10 The opposite of a teenager in his parent's basement is a parent in his teenager's basement.

I've heard of this series, but l lived in a different country. It must have been pretty good because it was on for quite awhile. Now, l can see it. This is great!

Phenomenal journalism The fifth estate never fails to impress!