Alex Iftimie on DOJ’s Recent Cyber Disruption Efforts
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2023
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Over the past two weeks, the Department of Justice has issued two press releases announcing disruption efforts it has taken against malicious cyber actors. One operation involved the disruption of Russia’s so-called Snake Malware Network, and the other involved the indictment of a Russian national for ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure.
To talk about these disruption efforts, Lawfare Senior Editor Stephanie Pell sat down with Alex Iftimie, Partner at the law firm Morrison Foerster, and a former federal prosecutor in the National Security and Cyber Crimes Units in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. They talked about the operational details and sophistication of some aspects of these disruption operations, the significance and relationship of these operations to other disruption efforts, and how these recent efforts fit into the broader picture of the DOJ’s and the U.S. government’s efforts to disrupt malicious cyber actors.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
| 0:04.0 | To access an ad-free version of the LawFair podcast, |
| 0:08.0 | become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:14.0 | That's patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:18.0 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, |
| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | You know, it may have just been a changing calculus, |
| 0:37.0 | where the value of what they were collecting had decreased, |
| 0:41.0 | and the value of disruption now outweighed that. |
| 0:44.0 | Or it's an indication that the government values disruption more today than they did in the past. |
| 0:53.0 | And I think there's probably some elements of both, |
| 0:59.0 | because we've seen the US government in a number of contexts |
| 1:03.0 | take more aggressive action to disrupt the activities of the FSB and other state actors, |
| 1:12.0 | and also ransomware groups. |
| 1:15.0 | I'm Stephanie Pell, senior editor at LawFair, |
| 1:18.0 | and this is the LawFair podcast May 19, 2023. |
| 1:22.0 | Over the past two weeks, the Department of Justice has issued two press releases, |
| 1:27.0 | announcing disruption efforts it has taken against malicious cyber actors. |
| 1:32.0 | One operation involved the disruption of Russia's so-called snake malware network, |
| 1:38.0 | and the other involved the indictment of Russian national for ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure. |
| 1:44.0 | To talk about these disruption efforts, I sat down with Alex Iftimi, |
| 1:49.0 | partner at the law firm Morison Forrestor, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Lawfare Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Lawfare Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.