Almost three-quarters (74%) of all the money paid in ransomware attacks in 2021 ended up with hackers that are in some capacity associated with Russia.

This is the conclusion of a report published by Chainanalysis – a company that mainly specializes in helping the government track illegal transactions.

According to the researchers, hacker groups that “are highly likely to be affiliated with Russia in some way” have made over 400 million dollars in cryptocurrencies last year. Over 9.9% of all the money paid in ransomware attacks ended up in the accounts of the infamous Evil Corp hacker group that is thought to be connected to Russia’s defense and law enforcement agencies.

The research considered the hackers likely being Russian if they were active on Russian hacker forums. Another criterion was if they wrote their malicious code in such a way that it would not harm devices if they were associated with Russia or countries of the CIS.

The research suggests that a third and to half of all money being transferred to accounts of cryptocurrency-associated companies in Moscow City (Russian business park) have an unlawful origin. This suggests that those companies are likely connected, working with, or are Russian hacker groups.