Glebov Egor Nikolaevich

Biography

2025: Arrest in U.S. over alleged Phobos ransomware attacks on 1,000 companies

On February 10, 2025, the US Department of Justice announced the arrest of Russian citizens Roman Berezhny and Yegor Glebov, who are suspected of spreading and using the Phobos ransomware virus. It is alleged that more than 1,000 government agencies and private organizations around the world became victims of the cyber group.

According to investigators, from May 2019 to October 2024, Berezhnaya, Glebov and other persons were engaged in hacker attacks. They allegedly hacked into the victims' computer networks, stole files, and also encrypted information using the Phobos malware. Then, it is alleged, the participants in the cyber group extorted the ransom from the victims in exchange for decryption keys, threatening to publish the stolen information on the Internet if they refused to pay the money.

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Фото: Freepik

The US Department of Justice claims that the attacked organizations suffered significant financial losses not only in connection with the payment of the ransom, but also as a result of the loss of access to their data. Among the victims were a children's hospital, health care providers, educational institutions and other enterprises. The total amount of payments from the affected structures is estimated at $16 million.

Berezhny and Glebov were charged with 11 counts. The Russians face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for each count relating to electronic fraud, 10 years in prison for each count of computer hacking, and 5 years in prison for each of the other counts.

At the same time, Europol and the German authorities announced a large-scale operation involving the FBI and other international law enforcement agencies to block more than 100 servers associated with the Phobos criminal network.^[1]

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