Three rogue cybersecurity professionals ran a covert ransomware operation aimed at extorting companies across the United States by encrypting their networks, prosecutors said.
They each collaborated with notorious hacking gang ALPHV, also known as Blackcat, in an attempt to extort their owners out of millions of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency, prosecutors alleged in an indictment filed last month in a federal court in Miami, Florida.
The professionals are all Americans, although only two of them—Ryan Clifford Goldberg, a resident of Watkinsville, Georgia, and Kevin Tyler Martin, of Roanoke, Texas—have been named.
The targeted companies have not been identified by authorities, who described them only as firms in various industries based in California, Florida, Maryland, and Virginia….