Security News > 2020 > October > Amid an Embarrassment of Riches, Ransom Gangs Increasingly Outsource Their Work
There's an old adage in information security: "Every company gets penetration tested, whether or not they pay someone for the pleasure." Many organizations that do hire professionals to test their network security posture unfortunately tend to focus on fixing vulnerabilities hackers could use to break in.
These folks are very often contractors who work with established ransomware groups, and who are paid a set percentage of any eventual ransom payments made by a victim company.
From other classified ads he posted in August and September 2020, it seems clear Dr. Samuil's team has some kind of privileged access to financial data on targeted companies that gives them a better idea of how much cash the victim firm may have on hand to pay a ransom demand.
According to cybersecurity firm Intel 471, Dr. Samuil's ad is hardly unique, and there are several other seasoned cybercriminals who are customers of popular ransomware-as-a-service offerings that are hiring sub-contractors to farm out some of the grunt work.
A former business partner of MultiVPN who had a rather public falling out with Dr. Samuil in the cybercrime underground told KrebsOnSecurity that Rakityansky is indeed Dr. Samuil's real surname, and that he is a 32- or 33-year-old currently living in Bryansk, a city located approximately 200 miles southwest of Moscow.