Tracking a hacker who extorted millions through ransomware attacks - The Fifth Estate

We examine the case of a Canadian government worker who had a secret life as a hacker with NetWalker, a criminal ransomware gang. Sebastien Vachon-Desjardins amassed millions of dollars in bitcoin by threatening to expose the private digital information of victims if they didn’t pay up. We reveal how he did it, the digital trail of destruction and how he got caught.

#Ransomware #Cybercrime #Hacker

producer/director
LINDA GUERRIERO

writer
MARIE-MAUDE DENIS

associate producer
ROXANNA WOLOSHYN

video editor
NAIRE BAHJAT

principal cinematography
JONATHAN CASTELL

additional cinematography
ADRIAN DI VIRGILIO
PASCAL LEBLOND
TREVOR LYONS
RAPHAEL TREMBLAY

for Radio-Canada’s Enquête

producer/director
LAURENCE MATHIEU-LEGER

associate producer
MICHAEL DEETJENS

principal cinematography
CARL MONDELLO

additional cinematography
FRANCOIS GENEST

video editors
LAURENCE MATHIEU-LEGER
BERNARD LAPOINTE
archival material
C-SPAN
PARAMOUNT GLOBAL
POND5
RCMP
REUTERS
YOUTUBE/ APACHE INDIAN / MANGO MUSIC
YOUTUBE/APPALACHES VIDEO
YOUTUBE/ SOUTH PARK STUDIOS
YOUTUBE/VACHON

graphic designers
JAKE BOONE
FROILAN UNTALASCO

graphic director
JEFF GOLDHAR

visual research
LESLIE MORRISON

media management
ABRAHAM BARMADA
MATT GUERIN

post audio
RICK STARKS
RON SEARLES

colourist
SCOTT McINTYRE

rollout producer
LEANNE STEPNOW

social media producer
AVNEET DHILLON
MARÍA JOSÉ BURGOS

digital producer
JANET DAVISON

theme music
STEVE D'ANGELO

project manager
VICTOR KERR

associate director
NANCI KING

packaging editor
ALESSIA PROTOMANNI

resource coordinators
MEGAN BEECKMANS
CHAHAT DESAI
SAM NAR

coordinating associate director
RHONDA KIRKPATRICK

senior producer
ALLYA DAVIDSON

executive producer
DIANA SWAIN

original broadcast
NOVEMBER 10, 2022

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About The Fifth Estate: For four decades The Fifth Estate has been Canada's premier investigative documentary program. Hosts Bob McKeown, Gillian Findlay, Mark Kelley and Steven D'Souza continue a tradition of provocative and fearless journalism. The Fifth Estate brings in-depth investigations that matter to Canadians — delivering a dazzling parade of political leaders, controversial characters and ordinary people whose lives were touched by triumph or tragedy.

[xXRedTheDragonXx]

As someone who has worked in IT for many, many years I just want to say this: Keep backups. Good backups. Follow the 3, 2, 1 rule. 3 backups, on 2 different types of media, with 1 extra backup off-site in the cloud. Backing up a single computer can be as cheap as a few dollars per month. You have ZERO excuse for not backing up your data. If you run a business that uses computers in some way, you NEED to have a backup of your data. If you keep good backups, you will NEVER need to pay a ransom, EVER!!! Get these criminals out of business by backing up your data!!!

[GoCoyote]

I worked for a company in the 90's that, in addition to the regular system backups, backed up all data every evening to two external drives locally, and two external drives for removal to two different off site locations that were driven off by two different employees every evening. These drives were not accessible by the network except for the backup process. If data needed to be recovered, it was first accessed by an independent user who could copy the drives to another computer for decryption and recovery, but the backups never touched the network. I am sure things have gotten easier now, but having a two physical drives in secure locations struck me as a good idea.

[sylvanahenson]

Registered nurse here, I worked for one of the biggest research/teaching hospital in the US and I witnessed this ransomeware thing first hand. We had no access to our charting system for about 2weeks which was no fun. Imagine having to care for 5 patients while doing everything without a computer, all of that during Covid. This was the scariest time of my nursing career because not just patients safety was at all time high but, nurses and most healthcare workers.

[AK-pzom]

How was he able to get a government job with a criminal record for drugs? Incredible

[northerngirl]

It’s shame if a company that gets hacked doesn’t tell it’s clients of a hack. Very dishonest and in the end helps the hackers.

[elizabethgrogan]

The Fifth Estate's investigation and presentation is beyond compare.

[davescott]

Congratulations to law enforcement and the cooperation demonstrated. The governments around the world and the respective criminal justice systems must do everything possible to manage this criminal cancer.

[youtube_username_]

If he were truly remorseful he would have cooperated fully by naming his co-conspirators. He would have tried to help the current victims. He felt no remorse other than regretting that he was caught.

[SuperVampirelife]

Wow His Greed level took him to the moon. He had over $20 M and still fishing for 300K smh. With that kind of money you could’ve gone in a different country and live a normal life until God calls him. I guess he wasn’t that smart after all.

[jamesmaddison]

Want to avoid getting wiped out by ransomware? Do weekly backups, but dont override the previous backup.
Keep all backups in "cold storage", meaning on removable drives etc so theyre not connected to any system, no internet and so on.
Highly sensitive files you keep segregated in entirely separate systems and networks, each file it contains you have individually encrypted with a separate key, so if one is compromised the others wont be.
This drastically reduces the footprint and potential damages that can result from a breach.
I work in cyber security at Mandiant as full time cyber threat intel analyst and im also on the penetration test red team.
These are just a couple of the things we recommend to all our clients

[Ahannn]

Commendable documentary by The Fifth Estate.

[mattbergen]

Imagine you run a big company...and don't have any backups...

[frederick]

The love of money is the root of all evil.
1 Timothy 6:10

[jeffbaxter]

The punishment for this should be VERY severe.

[suehancey]

Let’s hope he doesn’t have access to a computer in Prison!

[queenofthebutterflies]

I wish we didn't have the internet. We used to kick back and listen to music, faces not glued to our screens. '90's were good.

[kaytriott]

There needs to be more of this kind of unified front against these types of cyber criminals.

[janvdb]

Scary to think how much our data is insecure. Definitely costly but this is the new arena of crime.

[adamk]

Phenomenal journalism
The fifth estate never fails to impress!

[joananne]

I am shocked that a university could even come up with $780, 000. Universities don’t have money.