The U.S. government appears eager to finish off what's left of the notorious Hive ransomware group, offering a $10 million reward for information that leads to the identification and location of any of the leaders of the gang.
The State Department on top of that is offering another $5 million for information that results in the arrest or conviction of anyone in any country who participated or tried to participate in Hive's operations.
The bounties come more than a year after the law enforcement agencies from the United States and other countries seized the ransomware group's front- and back-end infrastructure - including servers and websites - Hive used to communicate with members.
The FBI also gave decryption keys to more than 1,300 Hive victims, essentially enabling them to regain control over their captured data.
The rewards are being offered through the State Department's Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program, which targets criminal organizations whose operations cross national lines.
The government says the Hive ransomware variant, which emerged in 2021, harmed more than 1,500 victims in more than 80 countries, including the United States.
Victims of the group and its affiliates included governments, organizations in the communications, critical manufacturing, and IT sectors, and particularly healthcare and public head organizations, according to an advisory in late 2022 from the FBI, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and Department of Health and Human Services.
The group racked up more than $100 million in ransoms and the FBI estimated that distributing the encryption keys to victims likely averted $130 million in potential ransoms.
Researchers with Chainalysis believe that number is too conservative.
In a ransomware report this week, the blockchain analyst firm said the takedown of the Hive group and the decryption keys were significant factors in the incidence of ransomware attacks and the relatively low amount of ransomware payments by Hive and every other threat group - $567 million - collected in 2022.
The FBI had infiltrated Hive's operations for six months that year.
During that time, total ransomware payments reached $290.35 million, according to Chainalysis.
French authorities said he was suspected of having several millions of dollars in his crypto wallets that were considered suspicious and, after his arrest, an analysis of his phone revealed crypto assets worth more than $614,000, which was seized.
This Cyber News was published on securityboulevard.com. Publication date: Fri, 09 Feb 2024 14:43:04 +0000