Two Iranian Men charges for Deploying SamSam Ransomware on Hospitals & Public Sectors that Caused $30 M in Losses

Two Iranian Men charges for Sophisticated SamSam Ransomware deployment on various public sectors, Hospitals, Municipalities that caused $30 million damages and huge amount of sensitive data lose.

Faramarz Shahi Savandi, 34, and Mohammad Mehdi Shah Mansouri, 27 who residing in Iran were involved the deployment of the SamSam ransomware for almost 34-months.

SamSam Ransomware is one of the most sphosticated Ransomware family that encrypting data on the computers of victims once they infected and lock down the computer and demand the ransom payment in order to provide access back to victims.

Savandi and Mansouri involved to infiltrate the victims computer using the system vulnerabilities and deploy the ransomware and encrypt the complete system files.

There are  more than 200 victims were affected by this ransomware attack included hospitals, municipalities, and public institutions, according to the indictment, including the City of Atlanta, Georgia; the City of Newark, New Jersey; the Port of San Diego, California; the Colorado Department of Transportation; the University of Calgary in Calgary, Alberta, Canada; and six health care-related entities etc.

Once they compromised the Victims then they demaind the ransom amount that needs to pay via bitcoin to exchange for decryption keys for the encrypted data and they exchange the bitcoins into Iranian rial using Iran-based Bitcoin exchangers.

Also they have collected over $6 million USD to date and the attack caused $30 million for the victims.

According to the indictment, the hackers infiltrated computer systems in 10 states and Canada and then demanded payment. The criminal activity harmed state agencies, city governments, hospitals, and countless innocent victims.”

“According to Department of Justice, Savandi and Mansouri are charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit fraud and related activity in connection with computers, two substantive counts of intentional damage to a protected computer and two substantive counts of transmitting a demand in relation to damaging a protected computer.”

Also the These two attackers using Tor to hide their identity duringy launching attacks outside regular business hours, when a victim would find it more difficult to mitigate the attack, and by encrypting backups of the victims’ computers. Officials said.

Victims are encouraged to contact their local FBI field office and file a complaint online with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).