Authorities arrested four suspected members of the LockBit ransomware gang during the third phase of the international law enforcement effort dubbed Operation Cronos. Operation Cronos' efforts to disrupt the LockBit ransomware gang continue as authorities announced the arrests of four alleged members, including one developer. On Tuesday, Europol also announced that Australia, U.K. and U.S. authorities sanctioned a threat actor that the NCA said is a prolific affiliate of LockBit and linked to Evil Corp. In a separate press release on Tuesday, NCA said Evil Corp emerged in 2014 as a "family-centered financial crime group in Moscow" but grew into a significant cybercriminal operation that extorted at least $300 million from victim organizations worldwide, including those in the healthcare and government sectors. Now, Europol said French authorities arrested one suspected developer of Lockbit ransomware and British authorities arrested two threat actors for allegedly supporting the activity of LockBit affiliate. The arrests were made as part of the third phase of Operation Cronos, a joint law enforcement effort that temporarily disrupted LockBit's operations earlier this year. During the second phase, authorities exposed and sanctioned LockBit's alleged ringleader Dimitry Yuryevich Khoroshev, a Russian national known in cybercrime circles as LockBitSupp. Operation Cronos was first announced in February after the international operation, led by the U.K.'s National Crime Agency (NCA), successfully seized LockBit's websites, servers, source code and decryption keys. News of the recent arrests was initially teased by law enforcement agencies on one of the seized LockBit leak sites that authorities took control of in Phase 1. Europol announced on Tuesday that four new arrests were made in the fight against LockBit, one of the most prolific ransomware-as-a-service groups on the threat landscape. Additionally, Europol said Spanish authorities arrested an alleged administrator who ran LockBit's bulletproof hosting service. Also on Tuesday, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed an indictment against a Russian national and alleged key Evil Corp member named Aleksandr Viktorovich Ryzhenko. While vendors and researchers confirmed the operation did disrupt LockBit activity, the ransomware gang quickly resumed operations. The authorities sanctioned 23 alleged cybercriminals overall during the third phase of Operation Cronos.
This Cyber News was published on www.techtarget.com. Publication date: Tue, 01 Oct 2024 19:13:08 +0000