26-year-old Ukrainian national Mark Sokolovsky is accused of participating in the Raccoon Stealer malware-as-a-service (MaaS) cybercrime operation.
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Raccoon Stealer is an information-stealing trojan distributed under the MaaS (malware-as-a-service) model that hackers rent for $75/week or $200/month.
With a subscription, users also gain access to an admin panel, where they can customize the malware, recover stolen data, and create new malware builds.
Since Raccoon Stealer is able to extract a wide range of data from infected devices, including information such as saved browser, credit cards, crypto wallets , and email data, it has become quite popular among criminals.
Sokolovsky, also known by the online aliases raccoonstealer, Photix, and black21jack77777, was arrested in March 2022 and is currently in prison in the Netherlands awaiting extradition to the United States.
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The FBI, along with law enforcement partners in the Netherlands and Italy, dismantled the Raccoon Infostealer infrastructure after the defendant was arrested by Dutch authorities.
The Raccoon Stealer group suspended its activities after claiming on Russian-language hacking forums that one of its lead programmers was killed during the invasion of Ukraine. This happened around the time of the arrest.
The Raccoon Stealer operation was revived in early June with a new version that is entirely C/C++ and has improved back-end, front-end, and data-stealing capabilities.
Since March, the FBI has been collecting data stolen by cybercriminals using the Raccoon Stealer malware.
The FBI has created a website where anyone can check if their data is stored in the US government's archive of stolen information from Raccoon Infostealer.
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What is an infostealer? Infostealer is a type of malware that is specifically designed to steal sensitive information from its victims. Once Infostealer is installed on a victim's computer, it will begin collecting sensitive information, such as login details and credit card numbers. Infostealer will then send this information back to the attacker, who can use to commit fraud or identity theft.
Information source: bleepingcomputer.com
