A 57-year-old man from the state of Missouri was arrested over a failed campaign that threatened to steal bitcoin and data and targeted his former employer.
Daniel Raine of Kansas City, Missouri, faces charges of extortion related to threatening to damage a protected computer. He is also charged with intent to damage a protected computer and unlawful acts involving the use of telecommunications or electronic means, such as the internet or telephones, for the purpose of defrauding or stealing money.
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He was arrested in the state on August 27, 2024, after a failed extortion attempt at an unnamed industrial company based in Somerset County, New Jersey, where he worked as a principal infrastructure engineer. According to court documents, some employees at the company allegedly received a blackmailing email warning that all IT administrators had been blocked or removed from the network, that data backups had been deleted, and that an additional 40 servers would be disabled at a rate of one per day over the next 10 days unless a ransom of 20 bitcoins, worth $750,000, was paid.
Rhyne, without the necessary authorization, scheduled numerous computer tasks on the network, such as changing the company's administrator passwords and shutting down its servers. He also had access to the email address used to send the November 25 extortion email to the company's employees.
Rhyne is believed to have used the Windows net user tool and Sysinternals Utilities' PsPasswd to modify domain and local administrator accounts, changing the passwords to "TheFr0zenCrew!", prosecutors said in court documents.
Authorities said the defendant allegedly used a hidden virtual machine to gain remote access to an administrator account. This access was not limited to his company laptop, but also included searching the Internet for information on using the command line to change the local administrator password and deleting Windows log files .
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Rhyne, who appeared in court on the day of his arrest, faces a maximum prison sentence of 35 years and a fine of $750,000 for the three charges that have been brought against him.
Source: thehackernews
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