A coalition of international law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and Britain’s National Crime Agency, said they had shut down LockBit, one of the most prolific hacking groups of all time, including shutting down sites the organization used to pay ransoms.
In a message on the group’s website, published on Monday, it says that it is “currently under the control” of the British agency, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, reports Bloomberg. According to an FBI representative, law enforcement from 11 countries took part in the operation, which seized 11,000 domains used by LockBit and its affiliates to distribute ransomware. The operation, which covered LockBit’s infrastructure and targeted the malware deployment system, took place in recent days.
LockBit has caused huge losses and costs – it won’t do it again. We hacked the hackers, took control of their infrastructure, extracted their source code, and obtained the keys to help victims decrypt their systems.
— Graham Biggar, Director General of the US National Crime Agency.
LockBit specializes in using malware known as ransomware to encrypt files on its victims’ computers and then demand payment to unlock the files.
The group is responsible for last year’s attack on the U.S. branch of Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., which disrupted the $26 billion U.S. Treasury bond market. It also took down a site that Boeing uses to sell airplane parts, software and services.
As part of the operation, two members of LockBit were arrested in Poland and Ukraine, according to a report from the European Union’s law enforcement agency, Europol. Three international warrants and five indictments have been issued by French and American authorities, the agency said in a statement.
LockBit first became known in 2021, calling itself LockBit 1.0. In 2022, it became LockBit 2.0, and its latest iteration is LockBit Green. One of the last victims of the group was the EquilLend company. The trading platform, which processes trillions of dollars in transactions a month, said the Jan. 22 incident affected some of its automated securities lending services.
According to the FBI, 1,600 people in the US and 2,000 worldwide were victims of the hacking group. The vast majority are from the private sector, and the FBI said it is tracking 144 million ransoms paid in connection with LockBit attacks.
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