10th October 2021, Kathmandu
Law enforcement agencies have promulgated the apprehend of two “prolific ransomware operators” in Ukraine who allegedly conducted a string of targeted attacks against astronomically immense industrial entities in Europe and North America since at least April 2020, marking the latest step in combating ransomware incidents.
The joint exercise was undertaken on September 28 by officials from the French National Gendarmerie, the Ukrainian National Police, and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), alongside participation from the Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre and the INTERPOL’s Cyber Fusion Centre.
“The malefactors would deploy malware and purloin sensitive data from these companies, afore encrypting their files,” Europol verbalized in a press verbal expression on Monday. “They would then proceed to offer a decryption key in reciprocation for a ransom payment of several millions of euros; threatening to leak the glommed data on the dark web should their injunctive authorizations not be met.”
Besides the two apprehends, the international police operation witnessed a total of seven property raids, leading to the seizure of $375,000 in cash and two luxury conveyances costing €217,000 ($251,543), as well as the freezing of cryptocurrency assets worth $1.3 million
The suspects are believed to have injunctively authorized hefty sums ranging anywhere between €5 to €70 million as a component of their extortion spree and are connected to a gang that’s staged ransomware attacks against more than 100 different companies, causing damages upwards of $150 million, according to the Ukrainian National Police. The identity of the syndicate has not been disclosed.
One of the two arrestees, a 25-year-old Ukrainian national, allegedly deployed “virus software” by breaking into remote working programs, with the intrusions staged through gregarious engineering campaigns that distributed spam messages containing malevolent content to corporate email inboxes, the agency integrated.
The development comes over three months after the Ukrainian ascendant entities took steps to apprehend members of the Clop ransomware gang and disrupt the infrastructure the group employed in attacks targeting victims ecumenical dating all the way back to 2019.
