The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that Andrei Tyurin, a 37-year-old Russian citizen, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for his participation in an international hacking campaign that targeted multiple financial institutions, stockbrokers, news agencies and other companies.
Tyurin was arrested in Georgia for later extradition to the U.S., being singled out as primarily responsible for the hacking campaign that engaged thousands of JPMorgan Chase and Dow Jones clients. In American territory, the defendant faces all kinds of charges, including electronic fraud, aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to commit fraud, as well as illegitimate access to computer systems.
The authorities say the defendant is the intellectual author of this campaign, active in the U.S. at least between 2012 and 2015: “Hacking activities linked to this operation resulted in the largest data breach against a single financial institution in history, affecting more than 80 million people,” says the DOJ.
Prosecutors believe that the campaign’s operators earned more than $19 million USD in fraudulent revenue: “Operating from Moscow, Tyurin played a key role in the deployment of this campaign, which included one of the largest incidents of data theft in history through fraud against multiple companies in various sectors.”
The central indictment mentioned that Tyurin and his accomplices were inflating artificially the price of some shares listed on the U.S. stock exchange and subsequently fraudulently marketing them against multiple victims whose information had previously been stolen by the scammers.
The report also mentions that, between 2007 and 2015, Tyurin deployed multiple cyberattacks against all kinds of companies abroad: “In this period the defendant maintained sophisticated hacking campaigns in collaboration with the fictitious companies created by his accomplice Gery Shalon. The group’s activities were hidden behind the facade of online betting platforms and payment processing services.”
Tyurin maintained a complex surveillance and monitoring scheme for committed organizations, benefiting its fraudulent scheme. Tyurin remains awaiting transfer to the prison where he will serve his sentence.
He is a well-known expert in mobile security and malware analysis. He studied Computer Science at NYU and started working as a cyber security analyst in 2003. He is actively working as an anti-malware expert. He also worked for security companies like Kaspersky Lab. His everyday job includes researching about new malware and cyber security incidents. Also he has deep level of knowledge in mobile security and mobile vulnerabilities.
