Russian hacker faces up to 20 years in prison, following extradition and indictment over US phishing campaign that allegedly infected 80,000 PCs — hacker stole victims' data via remote access

(Image credit: Getty Images) A federal grand jury in California has indicted Russian citizen Searzhudin Tamirlanovich Aktulaev for allegedly conducting phishing attacks that stole data from over 80,000 computers between June 2016 and November 2017, using TVRAT and DarkVNC remote-control malware. Detailed in a Department of Justice press release on September 1st, the indictment — filed in June 2021 and released September 2026 — lists charges of “Conspiracy, Transmission of a Program, Information, Code, and Command to Cause Damage to a Protected Computer, and Aggravated Identity Theft, among other offenses.”Aktulaev was extradited to the U.S. in August 2026, five years after his arrest in Cyprus in May 2021. He made his first appearance in federal court in San Francisco — after which he was remanded to federal custody — and is scheduled to appear in district court on October 5, 2026. The arrest was made after an FBI investigation, and the case is being prosecuted by the National Security, Cyber, and Special Prosecutions Section.According to the indictment, Aktulaev “conspired to exploit the online message platform of a well-known freelance employment technology company, located in the Northern District of California, to spread malware to approximately 80,000 freelancers”. He sent messages containing malicious Microsoft Excel attachments, using approximately 255 fake user accounts. Once opened, the attachments prompted users to run a macro that then downloaded malware from the Internet, mirroring a hack earlier this year in which an unofficial 7-zip.com website served malware-laden downloads for over a week.The attack used TVRAT (TeamViewer Remote Access Trojan) and DarkVNC malware, both of which grant the attacker remote control of the infected system. TVRAT exploits TeamViewer, while DarkVNC exploits VNC Viewer, popular remote administration tools. The malware stole and uploaded data from the victims' computers to a command-and-control server, from which Aktulaev and his co-conspirators extracted the stolen data to “commit fraud and other criminal activities”.The indictment says thousands of computers infected by the TVRAT malware were “calling back” to a command-and-control domain hosted in the United States, which was paid for using virtual currency. Roughly half of the victims were in the United States, many of whom were Northern District of California residents, according to the indictment.“A database found on the command-and-control domain revealed thousands of victims. Additionally, a shared document on the email account used in the criminal activities contained information to include e-commerce login credentials, as well as personally identifiable information (“PII”) for hundreds of victims,” the press release said.If convicted, Aktulaev could spend up to 20 years behind bars and pay a $250,000 fine or twice the total illicit gains for the conspiracy to commit wire fraud charge alone. The other charges carry terms ranging from two to twenty years in prison, in addition to fines. Meanwhile, the FBI is currently investigating another hack in which 153 million US and Canadian drivers’ licenses were leaked on a Russian cybercrime forum.Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds. Etiido Uko is a news contributor for Tom's Hardware covering the latest updates in big tech and the PC industry. He is a mechanical engineer and senior technical writer with over nine years of experience in documentation and reporting. He is deeply passionate about all things engineering and technology, and is an expert in gadgets, manufacturing, robotics, automotive, and aerospace.