{"id":29521,"date":"2020-10-02T11:44:20","date_gmt":"2020-10-02T08:44:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=29521"},"modified":"2025-08-27T17:29:41","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T14:29:41","slug":"us-authorities-urge-not-to-pay-ransomware-operators-under-the-threat-of-sanctions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/us-authorities-urge-not-to-pay-ransomware-operators-under-the-threat-of-sanctions\/","title":{"rendered":"US authorities urge not to pay ransomware operators under the threat of sanctions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The United States Treasury&#8217;s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has published guidance for ransomware victims. The agency said that paying ransoms to operators of ransomware software that are subject to U.S. sanctions would also be considered a sanction violation.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block;\"><a style=\"text-decoration: underline;\" title=\"View Ofac Ransomware Advisory on Scribd\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/document\/478396504\/Ofac-Ransomware-Advisory#from_embed\">Ofac Ransomware Advisory<\/a> by <a style=\"text-decoration: underline;\" title=\"View ForkLog's profile on Scribd\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/user\/456422024\/ForkLog#from_embed\">ForkLog<\/a> on Scribd<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"doc_37460\" class=\"scribd_iframe_embed\" title=\"Ofac Ransomware Advisory \" src=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/embeds\/478396504\/content?start_page=1&#038;view_mode=scroll&#038;access_key=key-D0DVSCoBtlkRL1pNYkG3\" width=\"100%\" height=\"600\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" data-auto-height=\"false\" data-aspect-ratio=\"0.7729220222793488\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>According to the document, companies or firms paying ransoms to hackers, &#8216;facilitating payments to cybercriminals on behalf of victims&#8217;, not only encourage cybercrime but also risk violating regulatory rules.<\/p>\n<p>OFAC urged ransomware-affected companies to report the hacking incident to the regulator immediately.<\/p>\n<p>If the ransomware operators are sanctioned by the United States, a victim company&#8217;s approach to law enforcement would be a substantial mitigating factor for it, the statement says.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Among the groups on OFAC&#8217;s sanctions list are the cryptolocker developer Evgeniy Bogachev, the creators of ransomware <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SamSam<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the hacking group <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lazarus<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and its subgroups linked to WannaCry 2.0 ransomware, as well as <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Evil Corp<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and its leader Maxim Yakubets.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At the same time, the OFAC statement notes that the guidance is merely explanatory and has no legal force.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to ForkLog news on Telegram: <a href=\"https:\/\/t.me\/forklogfeed\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">ForkLog Feed<\/a> \u2014 the full news feed, <a href=\"https:\/\/telegram.me\/forklog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">ForkLog<\/a> \u2014 the most important news and polls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The United States Treasury&#8217;s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) published guidance for ransomware victims. The agency said that paying ransoms to ransomware operators that are subject to U.S. sanctions would also be considered a sanction violation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1154,686,26],"class_list":["post-29521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-crimes","tag-sanctions","tag-usa"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"20","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29521"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29523,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29521\/revisions\/29523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}