Man charged with Kaseya hack extradited to the US

The 22-year-old Ukrainian defendant charged with deploying REvil (Sodinokibi) ransomware to encrypt the data and computer systems of multiple organizations, including software provider Kaseya, was extradited to the US and arraigned in Texas on Wednesday.

The suspect, Yaroslav Vasinskyi, was arrested at a Polish border crossing in September when he was entering the country from Ukraine, The Record reported.

The Justice Department said that Vasinskyi was transported to Dallas by US law enforcement authorities last week, arriving on March 3. His initial court appearance took place this Wednesday, and was arraigned in the Northern District of Texas.

In addition to multiple international law enforcement groups and government agencies, the Justice Department said they received "significant assistance" from the companies BitDefender, McAfee, and Microsoft.

“When last year I announced charges against members of the Sodinokibi/REvil ransomware group, I made clear that the Justice Department will spare no resource in identifying and bringing to justice transnational cybercriminals who target the American people,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland in a statement. “That is exactly what we have done. The United States, alongside our international partners, will continue to swiftly identify, locate, and apprehend alleged cybercriminals, capture their illicit profits, and bring them to justice.”

Last July, REvil posted a message on its dark web portal claiming to have infected and encrypted a vast amount of files belonging to Kaseya customers, and demanded a $70 million ransom payment for the decrypter. Many of the company's customers were managed service providers (MSPS), which provided IT infrastructure support to hundreds or thousands of organizations, leading to outages in unexpected places, including supermarket chains in Sweden and kindergartens in New Zealand.