PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) -- A Canadian man is under arrest and facing charges he helped install ransomware and corrupted computer systems at several organizations, including a hospital network in the Philadelphia area.
Ransomware called NetWalker was custom built by a group of people from all around the world.
Sebastien Vachon-Desjardins was taken into custody and jailed in Canada. Federal authorities allege he and others took computer systems hostage at Crozer-Keystone Health System hospitals as well as at the University of California San Francisco and an assisted living facility in Maryland, and they demanded a ransom to remove the viruses.
Authorities recovered about $.5 million in cryptocurrency from Vachon-Desjardins. He is alleged to have taken more than $27.6 million.
Police in Bulgaria also recovered what’s being called a "dark web resource" that was used by the group, and tech experts are working to see if anything found might help with investigations of past or future attacks, like decryption keys.