Cybersecurity
Karen Vardanyan gets 24 months in Ryuk case
Karen Serobovich Vardanyan received a 24-month prison sentence and three years’ supervised release after pleading guilty to hacking U.S. organisations in Ryuk ransomware attacks and being extradited from Ukraine.
- Karen Serobovich Vardanyan was sentenced to 24 months in prison and three years of supervised release.
- He pleaded guilty in July after being extradited from Kyiv, Ukraine, following an arrest in April 2025.
- Court documents said he hacked the networks of multiple U.S. organisations in Ryuk ransomware attacks between March 2019 and about June 2020.
- The Justice Department said in July that he and co-conspirators allegedly received about 1,610 bitcoins in ransom payments, worth more than $15 million at the time.
Karen Serobovich Vardanyan, who was described as 35 years old, received a 24-month prison term and three years of supervised release. He had pleaded guilty in July after being extradited from Kyiv, Ukraine, following his arrest in April 2025.
Court documents said Vardanyan hacked the networks of multiple U.S. organisations in Ryuk ransomware attacks between March 2019 and around June 2020. The article said he specialised in gaining initial access to corporate networks.
Prosecutors said one of the attacks hit a company in Michigan that paid 200 bitcoin, worth more than $1.1 million at the time. They also said a school in Texas and a technology company in Wilsonville, Oregon, were breached.
The Justice Department said in July that Vardanyan and his co-conspirators illegally accessed victim networks and deployed ransomware on hundreds of servers and workstations. It said they allegedly received about 1,610 bitcoin in ransom payments, valued at more than $15 million at the time.
The article also said Ryuk operated from August 2018 to mid-2020 and was linked to a wave of attacks on healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic. It said Wizard Spider later moved to Conti, which then disbanded after leaks of its internal chats and source code in May 2022.
Named in this story
People
- Karen Serobovich Vardanyan
- pleaded guilty and was sentenced in the case
Organisations
- Wizard Spider
- the cybercrime gang said to be behind Ryuk
Governments and agencies
- U.S. Department of Justice
- said in July that he and co-conspirators accessed networks and deployed ransomware
Products and systems
- Ryuk
- the ransomware operation tied to the attacks
- Conti
- the ransomware that Wizard Spider switched to after Ryuk ended
Places
- Kyiv, Ukraine
- the place he was extradited from
- Michigan
- the state where one breached company paid 200 BTC
- Texas
- the state where prosecutors said a school was breached
- Wilsonville, Oregon
- the location of a breached technology company
How the source tells it
The article was mostly a straightforward court report, with a brief background section that used loaded crime descriptors and high-loss figures to amplify the ransomware threat.
- threat inflation loaded crime labels and high-loss figures were used in the background section