Witte Alla (Alla Witte)

Witte Alla (Alla Witte)

Biography

2021: Arrest over alleged involvement in Trickbot hacker group that stole millions of dollars

In early June 2021, Alla Witte, a native of Rostov-on-Don, was arrested in Miami, who, according to US law enforcement agencies, is one of the founders of the largest hacker syndicate Trickbot. She is accused of participating in cybercrimes, fraud and identity theft worth tens of millions of dollars.

Before the start of hacker activity, Alla Witte led a fairly ordinary life. She was educated in applied mathematics at the University of Latvia, then got a job as a sales manager and teacher. In the late 90s, Witte developed an interest in programming. In 2013, she began developing sites, and 2 years later joined Trickbot. According to assumptions, Witte stood at the origins of the hacker group Trickbot, becoming one of its founders.

In the first week of collaboration with Trickbot, Witte, who is known on the dark web as Max, wrote code to track each of the hundreds of users on whose devices the malicious software is installed, and recorded a video tutorial on how to use the program. Afterwards, Witte wrote code for a web panel that Trickbot uses to store data stolen from victims.

Alla Witte will remain in custody in Cleveland pending trial. The authorities refused to disclose the circumstances of her arrest, it is known that having married in 2007, her family moved from the Netherlands to Suriname in South America - upon arrival in Miami, she was detained.

A large-scale operation to eliminate TrickBot started in the fall of 2020, law enforcement agencies, representatives of Microsoft and other technology companies took part in it. Despite the fact that the specialists managed to neutralize TrickBot for some time, the hackers created new control servers and continued their activity. Other members of Trickbot are still at large in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Suriname, the US Department of Justice said.^[1][2]

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