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
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS