Russia's most notorious state cyberhackers used bitcoin to cover their ties to critical hacking campaign "infrastructure" such as servers and domain names, according to an indictment unsealed Monday by U.S. prosecutors.
- Six members of Russia's state-run hacking teams who allegedly targeted "thousands" of victims across companies, political campaigns, governments and the 2018 Winter Olympics through Russian Military Unit 7445 are named in the suit.
- Prosecutors also allege they were responsible for 2017's catastrophic "NotPetya" malware attack that caused billions of dollars in damage. Security researchers have made such claims before.
- NotPetya was based on the petya bitcoin ransomware exploit but with a malicious twist, prosecutors allege: "Even if victims paid the ransom ($300 worth of bitcoin), the Conspirators would not be able to decrypt and recover the victims' computer files."
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