Ex-Engineer Charged in Missouri for Failed $750,000 Bitcoin Extortion Attempt
Sep 03, 2024
Insider Threat / Network Security
A 57-year-old man from the U.S. state of Missouri has been arrested in connection with a failed data extortion campaign that targeted his former employer. Daniel Rhyne of Kansas City, Missouri, has been charged with one count of extortion in relation to a threat to cause damage to a protected computer, one count of intentional damage to a protected computer, and one count of wire fraud. He was arrested in the state on August 27, 2024, following an attempt to extort an unnamed industrial company that's headquartered in Somerset County, New Jersey, where he was employed as a core infrastructure engineer. Per court documents, some employees of the company are said to have received an extortion email that warned all of its IT administrators had been locked out or removed from the network, data backups had been deleted, and an additional 40 servers would be shut down each day over the next 10 days if a ransom of 20 bitcoin, then valued at $750,000, wasn't paid. "The inves