Federal prosecutors alleged Vasiliev helped infect networks around the world with LockBit.Officials with Europol said he is among the law enforcement group’s highest-value targets because of the large number of high-profile ransomware attacks he was involved in.Whereas most are manually operated, LockBit largely automated its tasks, a trait that allowed it to propagate with minimal human oversight following the initial point of compromise.LockBit is sold in underground broker forums that often require sellers to put up a deposit that customers can recover in the event that the wares don’t perform as advertised.Victims who don’t pay lose access to gigabytes or terabytes of files and see their private data circulated on a site on the dark web, where anyone can find it."