A former infrastructure engineer who allegedly locked IT colleagues out of his employer's systems and then threatened to shut down servers unless a ransom was paid has been arrested and charged following an FBI investigation.
Feds Dox World's Most Wanted Cybercriminal
Daniel Rhyne, 57, of Kansas City, Missouri, now faces up to 35 years behind bars for the alleged failed ransom attempt after being charged with one count of racketeering in connection with a threat to cause damage to a protected computer, a case of willful damage to a protected computer and one case of fraud.
According to court documents [PDF], Rhyne hatched the plan in November 2023 while working for an unnamed industrial company, headquartered in Somerset County, New Jersey.
His extortion scheme began at approximately 1600 EST on November 25, 2023, it is alleged, when network administrators received password reset notifications for a domain administrator account and hundreds of user accounts. About 44 minutes later, company employees received an email with the subject line: "Your network has been penetrated."
