Ransomware Diaries: Undercover with the Leader of Lockbit

An unusual announcement appeared in Russian Dark Web forums in June of 2020. Amid the hundreds of ads offering stolen credit card numbers and batches of personally identifiable information there was a Call for Papers.

“We’re kicking off the summer PAPER CONTEST,” it read. “Accepted article topics include any methods for popuring shells, malware and malware coding, viruses, trojans, bot development… monetization.”

Jon DiMaggio, chief security analyst at Analyst 1, remembers seeing the ad when it first appeared and …

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