Criminals attack Dr.Web offices with Molotov cocktails after being exposed!
In some cases, cyber-security work can become truly dangerous, even deadly, if it manages to disrupt the flow of income for international crime syndicates. Fortunately, this particular case does not refer to such an event, although it could.
In an interview given by Boris Sharov, CEO of Dr.Web antivirus, to Brian Krebs, he states that he recognized a series of incidents since the spring of 2014, when unknown assailants attacked his company's offices with Molotov cocktails.
The reason for the above attacks, according to Sharov, was the fact that his company, during its research, uncovered an malware ATM and immediately added it to its virus database.
Seeing their revenue hit, the people behind the malware sent the company two emails, giving the company an ultimatum, telling them to remove the malware from their database or face the consequences.
The CEO of Dr.Web said that after receiving the first email, on March 9, 2014, someone bombed the company's office in Saint Petersburg, where ATM Shields, a security product designed to protect ATMs from various cyber threats, is sold. A few days later, another attack followed, but as in the first, the attacker was not caught and the damage was minimal.
Two weeks later, when the second email arrived, another attack took place at the same office, but this time the attacker was arrested. Police released the perpetrator due to a lack of witnesses. Sherov added that the company's security had detected two break-ins at its Moscow offices, while on April 14, a fire was caused by an electrical issue at the company's Kiev office.
Shortly after the Kiev incident, Dr.Web received another email with a photo of its Kiev office, which led the CEO to believe that the criminal gang was from Ukraine and that the previous attacks in Russia had been ordered via the Dark Web.
His initial suspicions were confirmed by a bank in Moscow, which detected the gang's activities a few weeks later.
When Krebs asked him who he thought was attacking him, Sherov replied that he thought it was just the malware developers and not a whole gang, otherwise the attacks would have been much more severe.
