Hacker who faked own death pleads guilty to role in malware scheme

Mark Sokolovsky, 28, has pleaded guilty in federal court after his initial arrest in 2022 for his role in the Raccoon Infostealer, a malware-as-a-service scheme.

In 2022, Sokolovsky was 26 and awaiting extradition from the Netherlands to the United States, where he would be tried for his role in a malware-as-a-service scheme. He was eventually extradited in February 2024 after two painful years behind bars.

Sokolovsky distributed the Raccoon Infostealer to bad actors, who used the malware to harvest the data of over two million people.

The infostealer was leased to threat actors for as little as $200 per month, which they paid in cryptocurrency.

The cybercriminals who bought the malware used phishing techniques to convince victims to use the malware on their devices.

The Raccoon Infostealer took personal data, including login information, financial information, and other forms of personal data, from the victims' computers.

The information siphoned from victims included over four million emails, as per a previous Cybernews report.

In 2022, law enforcement identified 50 million unique credentials and forms of identification from the stolen data. However, it’s unknown whether any new credentials have been found since his arrest.

According to BlackBerry's cybersecurity division, Raccoon Infostealer is an affordable and effective form of malware often sold on the dark web. It harvests auto-fill passwords, browser history, cookies, credit card information, usernames, passwords, cryptocurrency wallets, and other sensitive information.

BlackBerry also said that Sokolovsky faked his own death, claiming to have been killed during the war between Russia and Ukraine.

On the Raccoon Infostealer dark web forum, the group shared a message stating that one of their team members is “no longer with us.” This was supposedly the reason why the “project” had been shut down.

However, Sokolovsky, despite fleeing from Ukraine to Europe, was sitting in a prison waiting to be extradited.

In 2024, Sokolovsky reached a plea agreement, in which the defendant agreed to a guilty plea to escape more severe charges.

In the previous article, Sokolovsky was looking at 20 years in prison on the charges of wire fraud and money laundering offenses, conspiracy to commit computer fraud charges, and aggravated identity theft offenses.

Now, he owes the court over $20,000 and must pay restitution of almost $1 million. It’s unclear as to whether he will serve time in prison.