Even though many in the US justifiably celebrate the prisoner exchange with Russia and the return of prominent American citizens back home, an FBI veteran tells Cybernews that releasing Russian hackers might be costly to Washington.
The prisoner exchange involving the US and Russia occurred on August 1st and included the release of 26 individuals. Among those were Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and Paul Whelan, a former US Marine. They had each received sentences for espionage in Russia.
Under the deal, many Russian opposition activists were also released. The Kremlin, however, is getting their assassins and hackers back – and that’s what worries James Turgal, VP of global cyber risk and board relations at Optiv and a 22-year FBI veteran.
The blockbuster exchange of the detainees included two prominent cybercriminals held by the US on charges of financially motivated cybercrime and hacking to facilitate insider trading – Roman Seleznev and Vladislav Klyushin.
Seleznev was sentenced to 27 years in prison back in 2017 for stealing and selling millions of credit card numbers and causing more than $169 million in damage to small businesses and financial institutions, including those in the US.
In 2023, Klyushin was also sentenced to nine years in prison in the US for his role in a $93 million stock market cheating scheme that relied on secret corporate information stolen through the hacking of US computer networks.
As said above, the US is not getting any of its hackers back in exchange – that’s because, according to Turgal, American citizens aren’t allowed to engage in cyberattacks or hack foreign governments. This is why the exchange also means risk to the US.
“From a cyber point of view, this trade – while welcomed news for US detainees and their families – may cause far greater future cyber-kinetic and monetary damage against the US and our allies,” Turgal told Cybernews.
“We must consider the future damage and impact the hackers/cybercriminals being released may cause, and we need to be clear that we are involved in a highly technical cyber war with Russia, China, North Korea, and several other rogue nation states and sponsored cyber threat actors.”
According to Turgal, the nature of cyberattacks on, for instance, American health care systems and hospitals is not just monetary: “There is a loss of life aspect as well, such as when ambulances are diverted or critical care for a patient fails because of a cyberattack.”
It’s also interesting that the names of two additional Russian nationals – Alexander Vinnik and Vladimir Dunaev – have also recently disappeared from the public electronic database of the US Federal Bureau of Prisons.
They weren’t included in the swap, at least officially. Either way, Turgal says at least a couple of Russian criminals “with a high cyber skill level have been allowed to go home and re-enter the cyber battlefield.”
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