One of the world’s biggest criminal hacking gangs on Tuesday woke up to a startling discovery: Law enforcement, after taking over their main Web site on Monday, were now threatening to reveal their personal details and data about their cybercrime organization.
The group, LockBit, had become notorious in cybercrime circles for using malicious software called ransomware to digitally extort victims, relying on underground marketing campaigns to boost its profile.
At one point, LockBit had promised US$1,000 to anyone who tattooed their logo on themselves, cybersecurity researchers said.
Photo: Handout via Reuters
The group’s ringleader, known by the online moniker “LockBitSupp,” had also become so confident in their own anonymity that they had promised US$10 million to the first person who could find and unmask them, the British National Crime Agency (NCA) said.
The international law enforcement operation, which had posted on the extortion Web site on Monday that it had taken control, on Tuesday said it had re-engineered LockBit’s core online system — mimicking the countdown clock that LockBit used in extortion attempts and posing its own US$10 million challenge, a review of LockBit’s “dark Web” site showed.
The core online system was re-engineered to target the hackers in the same way they had terrorized victims: with an advent calendar-like series of tiles, each marked with a countdown timer that, upon reaching zero, published stolen data.
Across the Web site’s front page, where victim names once stood, law enforcement agencies replaced the text and links with internal data obtained by hacking the hackers themselves.
The resulting display was a smorgasbord of law enforcement action against LockBit, which included indictments, sanctions, a tool with which victims can decrypt their data, and a new countdown with two days left on the clock which asked: “Who is LockBitSupp? The $10 million question.”
Before it was taken down, LockBit’s Web site had displayed an ever-growing gallery of victim organizations that was updated nearly daily. Next to the names were digital clocks showing the number of days left to the deadline given to each organization to provide ransom payment.
In June last year, technology news Web site TechCrunch said that LockBit had targeted Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, a month after claiming responsibility for a ransomware attack against a plant in Mexico owned by Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.
The unique law enforcement operation was the result of a years-long investigation by international police agencies and was designed to undermine the group’s credibility in the criminal underground, officials said.
“LockBit’s affiliates should be very concerned right now, especially as law enforcement continues to make decryptors available to victims,” Mandiant Consulting chief technology officer Charles Carmakal said.
The US has charged two Russian nationals with deploying LockBit ransomware against companies and groups around the world. Police in Poland and Ukraine made two arrests.
Before it was seized by police, LockBit would often publish caches of stolen data from victimized companies that did not pay — such as personal private information of customers, medical records, internal billing data and the communications of internal staff, among other things.
The leaks were intended to harm the reputation of victims and put them in legal jeopardy, netting LockBit more than US$120 million in ransom payments, experts said.
NCA Director-General Graeme Biggar on Tuesday told reporters that the true cost, including money spent by organizations and corporations scrambling to regain access to their networks and the effect on business, could have amounted to losses totaling Additional reporting by staff writer
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS