Russian National Extradited to US for Malware Campaign Targeting 80,000 Freelancers

A Russian national has been extradited to the United States to face federal charges for allegedly orchestrating a malware campaign that targeted approximately 80,000 users of a freelance employment platform between 2016 and 2017. Searzhudin Tamirlanovich Aktulaev, 40, was arrested in Cyprus in May 2025 and extradited on August 28, 2026. He made his initial appearance in a San Francisco federal court on August 31 and was remanded to federal custody. According to a federal grand jury indictment, Aktulaev and his alleged coconspirators created around 255 fake accounts on the messaging platform of a well-known freelance employment company headquartered in Northern California. From at least June 2016 through November 2017, these accounts were used to send malicious Microsoft Excel attachments to roughly 80,000 users, posing as prospective clients. When recipients opened the files and enabled a macro as prompted, the action downloaded malware from the internet onto their computers. The campaign deployed two primary malware families.