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The Central Bank of Russia will begin a trial of a digital ruble starting in April. The project will be launched for direct transactions between individuals and for retail purchases. Moscow is also starting the rollout of a digital ID. The news about the CBDC pilot was recently announced by Olga Skorobogatova, deputy governor of the Central Bank. "The pilot will involve real transactions between real customers - but for a limited number of transactions and for a limited number of customers with thirteen banks that have already confirmed their technical readiness," she said, according to the TASS news agency. Skorobogatova emphasized that the general public cannot participate in the pilot in this first phase, as it will start with selected customers. After the digital ruble has been tested in practice, the bank will decide how the project will be expanded. The Central Bank of Russia proposed the idea of a CBDC in October 2020. It then published a consultation document outlining potential designs for the digital ruble. In later publications, the bank said the project could help make the Russian economy less dependent on the US dollar and mitigate the effects of Western sanctions. In Russia, a digital ID is also being rolled out. "The Russian Ministry of Digital Development, together with the Federal Security Service (FSB), will submit a draft decision before May 1, which will allow for the use of a digital identity document on smartphones instead of a passport in some everyday situations," said Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to the Interfax news agency. There will be only a few situations in which a digital personal identity card can be legally used instead of a passport, said Minister of Digital Development Maksut Shadayev. "We are not eliminating the passport," he reassured.

In an unprecedented move, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), the country's principal security agency, on Friday disclosed that it arrested several members belonging to the notorious REvil ransomware gang and neutralized its operations. The surprise takedown, which it said was carried out at the request of the U.S. authorities, saw the law enforcement agency conduct raids at 25 addresses in the cities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Leningrad and Lipetsk regions that belonged to 14 suspected members of the organized cybercrime syndicate. "In order to implement the criminal plan, these persons developed malicious software, organized the theft of funds from the bank accounts of foreign citizens and their cashing, including through the purchase of expensive goods on the Internet," the FSB said in a statement. In addition, the FSB seized over 426 million rubles, including in cryptocurrency, $600,000, €500,000, as well as computer equipment, crypto wallets used to commit crimes, and 20 luxury cars that were purchased with money obtained by illicit means. One of the most active ransomware crews last year, REvil took responsibility for high-profile attacks against JBS and Kaseya, among a string of several others. The U.S. government told Reuters that one of the arrested individuals was also behind the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline in May 2021, once again confirming REvil's connections to a second collective called DarkSide. The group formally closed shop in October 2021 after the U.S. intervened to take its network of dark web servers offline. The next month, law enforcement authorities announced the arrest of seven individuals for their roles as affiliates of the REvil ransomware family, even as the U.S. charged a 22-year-old Ukrainian citizen linked to the ransomware gang for orchestrating the Kaseya ransomware attack. All those detained have been charged with "illegal circulation of means of payment," a criminal offense punishable by up to six years in prison. The suspects weren't named, but Reuters noted that a Moscow court identified two of the men as Roman Muromsky and Andrei Bessonov. The crackdown also comes as threat actors likely affiliated with Russian secret services crippled much of the Ukrainian government's public-facing digital infrastructure, in addition to defacing some of them with messages that alleged people's personal data had been made public and that the information stored in the servers was being destroyed. It remains to be what impact the arrests will have on the larger ransomware ecosystem, which has by and large continued to flourish despite a number of law enforcement actions, partly driven by Russia's willingness to look the other way when it comes to harboring cybercriminals in the country, effectively allowing the bad actors to operate with impunity. "While we are still looking to understand the true impact of these arrests, we applaud the Russian government for the actions it took today with regard to the REvil criminal ransomware group," Matt Olney, director of threat intelligence and interdiction at Cisco Talos, told The Hacker News. "It's important that criminal cyber actors and organizations not be allowed to operate with impunity. And so any result that leads to degrading of their capabilities is undoubtedly a good thing." Source

1C-Bitrix Site Management Russia version 2.0 suffers from an open redirection vulnerability. View the full article