Guilt admitted by RobbinHood ransomware attacker

BleepingComputer reports that Iranian national Sina Gholinejad, also known as Sina Ghaaf, was announced by the U.S. Department of Justice to have entered a guilty plea for his involvement in the Robbinhood ransomware operation.

Attacks with the Robbinhood ransomware launched by Gholinejad and his co-conspirators between January 2019 and March 2024 involved the exploitation of admin accounts or vulnerabilities to compromise several U.S. cities and organizations, including the Meridian Medical Group and Berkshire Farm Center, according to the Justice Department. Gholinejad, who is set to be imprisoned for up to 30 years, and his co-conspirators were also noted by an unsealed indictment to have leveraged European virtual private servers, VPNs, and cryptocurrency mixers to circumvent law enforcement clampdowns. Such a development comes after the Robbinhood ransomware gang, which became known following a disruptive attack against Baltimore's IT systems in 2019, was noted to have exploited a vulnerable Gigabyte driver to facilitate covert infections.