The United States and Britain have expanded sanctions on members of a Russian hacking gang known as Trickbot, targeting people involved in management and procurement for the group.
The action adds nearly a dozen people to the sanctions list, the U.S. Treasury Department and the British Foreign Office said on September 7.
The two countries previously imposed sanctions against seven members of Trickbot, noting the group's role in targeting hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the U.S. government and companies.
British officials said the Trickbot gang had extorted at least $180 million from people across the globe, while Washington said the Trickbot group had ties to Russian intelligence.
The Treasury Department said the action targeted "key actors involved in management and procurement for the Trickbot group," including administrators, managers, developers, and coders who have assisted Trickbot in its operations.
Undersecretary Brian Nelson said the United States "is resolute in our efforts to combat ransomware and respond to disruptions of our critical infrastructure."
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said the move was an attempt to disrupt the group's business model and strip its anonymity.
"These cybercriminals thrive off anonymity, moving in the shadows of the Internet to cause maximum damage and extort money from their victims," Cleverly said in a statement. "We know who they are and what they are doing."
The sanctions are also intended to make it harder for the hackers to launder money.
Trickbot draws its name from a suite of malware tools that the gang members use to hack and extort their victims. The rogue program, whose roots stretch back at least a decade, has been used to infect millions of computers worldwide, the Treasury said.
The U.S. Justice Department also planned to indict nine individuals tied to the gang, British and U.S. officials said.
A federal indictment unsealed on September 6 showed that at least four alleged members of the group -- Maksim Galochkin, Maksim Rudensky, Mikhail Tsarev, and Andrei Zhuikov -- were being charged in Tennessee with conspiring to use ransomware.
In addition to those four, the U.S. Treasury Department named seven other men designated for sanctions: Mikhail Chernov, Maksim Khaliullin, Artem Kurov, Sergei Loguntsov, Aleksandr Mozhayev, Dmitry Putilin, and Vadim Valyakhmetov.
While sanctions freeze any assets the individuals hold in U.S. jurisdiction and block people in the United States from having any dealings with the targets, they tend to be largely symbolic.
With reporting by Reuters