LONDON —
An global operation led by UK and U.S. law enforcement has seriously interferedwith “the world’s most damaging cybercrime group”, the Russian-linked ransomware expert LockBit, authorities revealed Tuesday.
LockBit and its affiliates haveactually targeted federalgovernments, significant business, schools and healthcarefacilities, triggering billions of dollars of damage and drawingout 10s of millions in ransoms from victims.
Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA), working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Europol and firms from 9 other nations in Operation Cronos, stated it had penetrated LockBit’s network and taken control of its services.
“We haveactually hacked the hackers, we haveactually taken control of their facilities, took their source code, and acquired secrets that will aid victims decrypt their systems,” NCA director basic Graeme Biggar informed pressreporters in London.
LockBit’s site — selling services that enable individuals to arrange cyber attacks and hold information till a ransom is paid appears — was taken over on Monday night.
A message appeared on the website specifying that it was “now under control of law enforcement”.
“As of today LockBit is efficiently redundant, LockBit hasactually been locked out,” Biggar stated.
The U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) stated the companies had took control of “numerous public-facing sites utilized by LockBit to link to the company’s facilities” and taken control of servers utilized by LockBit administrators.
The NCA included that it had got more than 1,000 decryption secrets and will be calling UK-based victims in the coming days a