Oleksii Lytvynenko, a 44-year-old Ukrainian national, has been sentenced to four years in a US prison for his role as both hacker and developer in the Conti ransomware operation, which attacked more than 1,000 victims worldwide before shutting down in 2022. The US Justice Department said he personally targeted at least a dozen companies and worked on a malware loader used by the group; police found data stolen from eight US victims and four overseas victims in his online accounts, and he pleaded guilty in June. Between 2020 and 2022 Conti affiliates attacked organisations across 47 US states and 31 countries, and the FBI estimated victims had paid the group more than $150 million in ransoms by January 2022. Lytvynenko, who previously lived in Cork, Ireland, is the latest in a line of Conti and LockBit affiliates prosecuted after the groups' infrastructure and internal communications were exposed; the DOJ emphasised that critical infrastructure entities were among the victims. The sentence is a modest penalty against a $150 million-plus campaign, and is best read as part of a slow accretion of individual accountability rather than a deterrent event.

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