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LOCKBIT CYBERCRIME GANG FACES GLOBAL TAKEDOWN

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LOCKBIT CYBERCRIME GANG FACES GLOBAL TAKEDOWN

By James Pearson and Karen Freifeld

Feb 21 2024 6:52AM
1


WITH INDICTMENTS AND ARRESTS.

An international law enforcement operation led by Britain's National Crime
Agency and the FBI has arrested and indicted members of the Lockbit ransomware
gang, in an unprecedented police operation that has struck one of the world's
most notorious cybercrime gangs.



The United States has charged two Russian nationals with deploying Lockbit
ransomware against companies and groups around the world. Police in Poland and
Ukraine made two arrests.

The NCA, US Department of Justice, FBI and Europol gathered in London to
announce the disruption of the gang, which has targeted over 2000 victims
worldwide, received more than US$120 million ($183 million) in ransom payments
and demanded hundreds of millions of dollars, the DOJ said.



Britain's National Crime Agency Cyber Division, with the US Department of
Justice, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies seized control of websites
used by Lockbit the gang and US and British authorities said.

The agencies also took the extraordinary step of using Lockbit's own website to
release internal data about the group itself. 



“We have hacked the hackers," Graeme Biggar, director general of the National
Crime Agency, told journalists.

"We have taken control of their infrastructure, seized their source code and
obtained keys that will help victims decrypt their systems,” 

The takedown, dubbed “Operation Cronos” was an international coalition of 10
countries, he said.

“Together, we have arrested, indicted or sanctioned some of the perpetrators and
we have gained unprecedented and comprehensive access to Lockbit’s systems”.

“As of today, Lockbit is effectively redundant,” he added. “Lockbit has been
locked out”.



A representative for Lockbit did not respond to messages from Reuters seeking
comment.

Obtained in New Jersey, the unsealed indictment charges Artur Sungatov and Ivan
Kondratyev, also known as Bassterlord, with using Lockbit ransomware to target
victims in manufacturing, logistics, insurance and other companies in five
states and Puerto Rico, as well as in semiconductor and other industries around
the world. 

Additional criminal charges against Kondratyev were unsealed on Tuesday related
to his use of ransomware in 2020 against a victim in California, the Justice
department said. 

Both men were also sanctioned by the US Treasury.

In November last year, Lockbit published internal data from Boeing, one of the
world's largest defence and space contractors, and said the US arm of China's
ICBC had paid a ransom following an attack that disrupted trades in the US
Treasury market.

In early 2023, Britain’s Royal Mail faced severe disruption after an attack by
the group. 

Lockbit and its affiliates makes money by coercing its targets into paying
ransom to decrypt or unlock that data with a digital key. 

The gang's digital extortion tools have been used against some of the world’s
largest organisations in recent months.

Its affiliates are like-minded criminal groups that Lockbit recruits to wage
attacks using those tools. Those affiliates carry out the attacks, and provide
Lockbit a cut of the ransom, which is usually demanded in the form of
cryptocurrency, making it harder to trace. 

Operation Cronos seized 34 of Lockbit's servers, arrested two members of the
gang, froze 200 cryptocurrency accounts, and closed 14,000 "rouge accounts" used
online to launch Lockbit's operations, the police agencies said.

Lockbit has caused monetary losses totalling billions, the NCA's Biggar said, to
businesses who not only had to pay ransom payments, but also had to shoulder the
cost of getting their systems back online. 

Before it was taken down, Lockbit's website displayed an ever-growing gallery of
victim organisations that was updated nearly daily.

Next to their names were digital clocks that showed the number of days left to
the deadline given to each organisation to provide ransom payment.

On Tuesday, the Lockbit leak website had been transformed by the NCA, FBI and
Europol into a leak site about the criminal gang itself, onto which
international police agencies published internal data from inside the group, and
countdown clocks threatening to reveal upcoming sanctions and the identity of
Lockbit’s ringleader, “LockbitSupp”.

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© 2019 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.
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