Security News > 2021 > December > Canadian charged with running ransomware attack on US state of Alaska
A Canadian man is accused of masterminding ransomware attacks that caused "Damage" to systems belonging to the US state of Alaska.
A federal indictment against Matthew Philbert, 31, of Ottawa, was unsealed yesterday, and he was also concurrently charged by the Canadian authorities with a number of other criminal offences at the same time.
US prosecutors [PDF] claimed he carried out "Cyber related offences" - including a specific 2018 attack on a computer in Alaska.
Detective Inspector Matt Watson of the Ontario Provincial Police's Criminal Investigation Branch told Canadian journalists: "We had individuals, just individuals whose home computers were compromised. We had small, medium-sized businesses. Many of these businesses were just hanging on by their fingernails through COVID and then they get hit with a very expensive ransomware demand. That's pretty tough."
He is said to have become a suspect after the FBI contacted their Canadian counterparts following ransomware attacks in Alaska.
In 2019, a ransomware attack caused headaches for the remote Arctic province of Nunavut, which appeared to come from the DoppelPaymer ransomware gang.
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