US charges Russian for infecting 80,000 freelancers with malware

A Russian national, Searzhudin Tamirlanovich Aktulaev, was indicted and extradited to the U.S. for running a large-scale phishing campaign (June 2016–Nov 2017) that used malicious Excel macros to deliver TVRAT and DarkVNC remote-access malware to thousands of freelancers, stealing login credentials and PII; half of the victims were in the U.S. and the campaign’s command-and-control infrastructure was paid for with virtual currency.