Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Law Enforcement takes down major ransomware site

This operation is pretty impressive:

Notorious ransomware gang LockBit's website has been taken over by law enforcement authorities, who claim they have disrupted the group's operations and will soon reveal the extent of an operation against the group.

...

But Europol has reportedly taken credit for shutting down LockBit, so perhaps Operation Cronos really has disrupted the gang’s operations.

If that's the case, this action will be welcome. LockBit is prolific and vicious: we've reported it attacking a children's hospital, Infosys, sandwich chain Subway, and many other attacks.

Reportedly there have been multiple arrests, data has been found that is expected to lead to more arrests, and multiple crypto currency accounts have been seized.  Eleven countries worked together on this which is also impressive.

We will see how much impact this has but Lockbit is one of the biggest ransomware schemes out there.  

And this isn't the only one of these takedowns in the last couple of months.  Well done.

 

5 comments:

Ed Bonderenka said...

Welcome news.

danielbarger said...

Unless the perpetrators are physically arrested and locked up where they have no access to computers or the web this isr going to stop the problem. And they have to get all the major players, not just some. Generally the rewards for cyber crime massively outweigh the risks. That must change if one expects to make any meaningful inroads into stopping cyber crimes.

Richard said...

I assume from the participating LE agencies that these guys were operating in the West and not China or Russia as we are usually told.

Aesop said...

Government hates competition.

matism said...

Aesop NAILED it!