Over the past few years, unknown hackers sent out millions of phishing emails containing links, when they crossed over to which users downloaded extortion software. During the phishing campaign, attackers used addresses allegedly owned by Swedish companies Telia and PostNord. Traces of hackers lead to Russia, the Swedish TV channel SVT alleges with reference to secret databases that were at its disposal.

It is not known when exactly the cyber attack took place, and what extortion software was used, but the channel indicates that only in Sweden malicious emails received 1.6 million users. The extortion program encrypts files on the victim's device and requires about 4-6 thousand. Swedish crowns in bitkoyany as a ransom.

In total, users from 31 countries, including Sweden, Australia, Poland, Spain, Italy, Turkey and India. TV channel reports about 20 thousand. affected Swedish users.

According to SVT reporters, the TV channel has evidence that cybercriminals operated from Russia. Comments on infected computers, bank accounts and earned amounts are written in Russian. In addition, extortion software creates a cryptographic key for each particular computer, and then sends it to a Russian server with an IP address in St. Petersburg.

"Russia has become the global center of cybercrime. It was here that extortion software was invented, and today the Russian mafia actively cooperates with hackers, earning a lot of money on extortion software, "American writer and lecturer Kim Zetter said in an interview with SVT channel, who for a long time studied the issues of extortion software.