A court in St. Petersburg sentenced four hackers from the REvil group to real terms. Biden demanded that Putin stop their activities even before the war

The St. Petersburg Garrison Military Court sentenced four members of the REvil hacker group to real terms on charges of illegal circulation of payment means (part 2 of Article 187 of the Criminal Code), writes Kommersant, citing its correspondent in the courtroom.

Artem Zayets and Alexey Malozemov received four and a half and five years in a general regime colony, respectively. Two more defendants, Daniil Puzyrevsky and Ruslan Khansvyarov, were also accused of using and distributing malware (Part 2 of Article 273 of the Criminal Code). They received five and a half and six years in prison, respectively.

In total, eight defendants are being tried in the case of the hacker group REvil. Four more became defendants in a new case initiated under the article on unlawful access to computer information (Article 272 of the Criminal Code). It was sent to the Prosecutor General’s Office, writes Kommersant.

All the defendants do not admit their guilt.

• The FSB announced the defeat of the REvil hacker group in January 2022. The intelligence service said it began looking for members of the group after receiving a request from US law enforcement agencies. As a result, the FSB conducted searches at 25 addresses of 14 group members and seized more than 426 million rubles, including in cryptocurrency, 600 thousand US dollars, 500 thousand euros, 20 premium cars, as well as computer equipment and cryptocurrency wallets. Eight participants were placed under arrest.
• Prior to this, US President Joe Biden, in a telephone conversation, demanded that Vladimir Putin stop the group’s activities. “I have made it very clear that the United States expects Russia to act if ransomware operates from its territory, even if it is not supported by the government,” Biden said after the July 2021 call.
• REvil carried out cyberattacks using ransomware. In particular, the FBI accused hackers of attacking the world's largest meat producer, the Brazilian company JBS, as well as the American pipeline system Colonial Pipeline. REvil was called a Russian group due to the fact that its members speak and write Russian.