Status: 08.11.2021 9:59 p.m.
Investigators from Europol and other police authorities have struck a heavy blow against a gang of hackers. Seven suspects were arrested in international raids. They are said to have blackmailed companies and looted millions.
European investigators have unearthed a gang of cyber criminals believed to be responsible for thousands of attacks on organizations and companies. The EU police authority Europol announced that seven suspects have been arrested since February, two of them in Romania last week. There were also arrests in South Korea and Kuwait. The men are said to be connected to the Russian hacker group REvil and the extortion gang Gandcrab.
The gang is said to be responsible for around 7,000 attacks with ransomware, according to the Europol announcement. The criminals had demanded a ransom of more than 200 million euros. The two Romanians alone are said to have infected around 5000 devices with malware, which would have brought them around half a million euros.
Attack on oil pipeline
According to the information, Interpol, the EU judicial authority Eurojust and investigators from the USA were also involved in the investigation as part of the month-long “Operation Golddust”. The criminals are said to have always proceeded according to the same method on their forays: They smuggled software into computer systems and blocked the data. They then extorted a ransom from the operators so that the systems could be unlocked again.
The Russian hacker group REvil, also known as Sodinokibi, has caused a stir in the past with large-scale cyber attacks. So they sabotaged the factories of the world’s largest meat producer JBS SA. The group is also blamed for a cyber attack on the US holiday weekend around July 4th that affected companies around the world. In May, the US company Colonial was the victim of an attack: The company had to temporarily completely shut down the operation of an oil pipeline and pay $ 2.3 million in ransom.
Many hackers are protected
The US Department of Justice sees the wave of ransomware attacks as a threat to national security and the economy. With many hackers operating in countries that do not extradite their citizens to the United States, arrests of foreign cybercriminals are of great concern to Washington.