IT worker jailed for impersonating ransomware gang to extort employer

28-year-old Ashley Liles, a former IT employee, has been sentenced to over three years in prison for attempting to blackmail his employer during a ransomware attack.

Liles, an IT security analyst at an Oxford-based company, exploited his position to intercept a ransomware payment following an attack suffered by his employer.

To deceive the company, he impersonated the ransomware gang extorting them. He tried to redirect the ransomware payments by switching the cybercriminals' cryptocurrency wallet to one under his control.

"Unknown to the police, his colleagues, and his employer, Liles commenced a separate and secondary attack against the company," reads the original press release by the South East Regional Organised Crime Unit (SEROCU).

"He accessed a board member's private emails over 300 times as well as altering the original blackmail email and changing the payment address provided by the original attacker."

He also created an email address very similar to the one used by the attackers and used it to put further pressure on his employer to ensure that the ransomware gang's demands would be met and the ransom would get paid.