Extorting 120 BTC, the “client of the WEX cryptocurrency exchange” has submitted new requirements to government agencies of the Russian Federation and now threatens to mine airports and airlines. This is stated in a letter sent to the Petrodvorets District Court of St. Petersburg on March 4.
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“If you want to avoid reports of aircraft being mined in flight, then you need to get a total of 120 bitcoins on the bitcoin wallet indicated below. Similar requirements are presented to several companies and airports, all are thrown off into a common boiler. You can thank Konstantin Malofeev that he does not return the stolen 120 bitcoins within three months of the evacuation of ships, ”the unknown wrote.
Since the beginning of this week, at least two aircrafts have made an emergency landing due to received letters of mining. It is not reported whether they are directly related to the ransomware of bitcoins.
In December 2019, an unknown person transferred 0.00036020 BTC to the miner's wallet. Part of this amount was spent, the current wallet balance is 0.00006666 BTC.
A series of false mines in the Russian Federation began in November 2019, shortly after the publication of the BBC investigation about the possible involvement of businessman Konstantin Malofeev and the FSB in stealing the funds of users of the WEX cryptocurrency exchange (BTC successor) for a total amount of $450 million. An unknown “miner” demanded to be paid 120 BTC stolen from the exchange.
Various sources suggest that the "miner" can be a real client of the site from Kyiv, and even the team of Malofeev himself, who thus tries to discredit WEX users and stop the proceedings on the theft of funds in the legal field.
To suppress the activity of “miner”, Roskomnadzor, at the request of the FSB, blocked the StartMail and ProtonMail mail services, which he used in the mailing list. ProtonMail later conducted its own investigation and deleted the mailboxes associated with the attacker.
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However, after that, the “miner” switched to various services of disposable mail addresses.