Two hackers have been singled out, as President Obama announced a new round of sanctions against Russia for the country’s alleged meddling in the U.S. election.
Mikhailovich Bogachev, 33, and Aleksey Alekseyevich Belan, 29, are said to have made millions by selling financial information they obtained in hacks.
Last year, the U.S. government announced that it was offering a $3million reward for information leading to Bogachev’s arrest – the most that had ever offered for a single cyber-attacker.
The FBI also placed a $100,000 reward on Belan.
Both have been wanted by the FBI for years, but have not been brought to justice because they both live in Russia, which doesn’t have a extradition agreement with the U.S. and is usually ambivalent to aiding American law enforcement.
The president’s sanctions will include a travel ban and freezing U.S.-based bank accounts for those named in the executive order.
But both Bogachev and Belan are unlikely to travel to the U.S. in the first place, since they are already wanted criminals. And it’s unclear whether they have any U.S.-based bank accounts.
Bogachev is said to be the hacker behind the malware called GameOver Zeus, which infected more than a million computers and caused the financial loss of more than $100million
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