A 57-year-old man from Missouri was arrested in connection to a failed data extortion scheme aimed at his previous employer, an industrial firm in New Jersey.
Originally from Kansas City, Missouri, Daniel Rhyne was arrested on August 27, 2024. He has been charged with Blackmail, sabotaging a computer system, and utilization of electronic means to defraud individuals. These charges come from accusations of conspiracy to blackmail his former employer, where he worked as a core infrastructure engineer.
The case of attempted extortion was realized after some company workers reported receiving threats through email. The emails further stated that the company IT administrators had been locked out or fired, data backup had been wiped out, and they would shut down 40 more servers daily for the next ten days if the ransom of 20 bitcoins, equivalent to $750, 000 was not paid.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), Rhyne had hacked the company’s computer systems by logging in remotely to the administrator account. Once within the network, he was said to encourage job scheduling most of which involved changing the passwords of administrators and shutting down servers. The probe established that Rhyne had control of the email address through which the extortion messages were sent on November 25, 2023.
Prosecutors say that Rhyne used a command in Windows called “net user” as well as a program called PsPasswd, which is part of Sysinternals Utilities, to change domain and local administrator accounts’ passwords to “TheFr0zenCrew!” They also accuse him of using a hidden virtual machine to access and admin account remotely. All this account is traced back to Rhyne’s company-issued laptop. It was also found that Rhyne had conducted web searches on how to use the command line to change local administrator passwords and clear Windows logs.
After the arrest, Rhyne made his first appearance before the magistrate court the very same day. If convicted on all the charges, he may face as much as 35 years imprisonment and a fine of $750,000.
