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Mark Sokolovsky pleaded guilty in a US court this week following his arrest by Dutch authorities in 2022.
Mark Sokolovsky, a 28-year-old Ukrainian national, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion in a United States federal court in Texas on 7 October.
Sokolovsky was arrested in the Netherlands by Dutch authorities on 22 March 2022 and was extradited to the US in February 2024 after being indicted for several crimes relating to the operation of the Raccoon Infostealer malware-as-a-service operation.
According to court documents and the US Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas, the Raccoon Infostealer was available for US$200 a month, payable in cryptocurrency. Once deployed – often via phishing emails – the malware was capable of stealing financial information, login details, and other personal data.
This data was then used to facilitate financial fraud or was sold to other hackers on cyber crime forums.
Following Sokolovsky’s 2022 arrest, the FBI was able to take down the infrastructure supporting the info stealer, disrupting the existing version of the malware at the time.
Months later, however, researchers with cyber security firm Sekoia’s threat intelligence team found evidence of a new version of Raccoon Stealer in circulation. Other operators of the malware promised to make a comeback on a Russian-language hacking forum in March 2022.
By May 2022, Raccoon Stealer v2 was being sold on both Telegram and hacking forums, and by 10 June 2022, its administration panel was showing up in searches on the Shodan search engine.
“Samples of Raccoon Stealer v2 were therefore observed in the wild since May 16, 2022,” Sekoia’s researchers said in a blog post on 28 June 2022.
“As for the previous version, threat actors mainly distribute the information stealer using fake installers, or cracked versions of popular software.”
Sokolovsky has also agreed to pay restitution of at least US$910,844.61 and a forfeiture money judgment of US$23,975.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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