The group’s website was “hacked” by the police.
Today, the judicial police of the Justice and Development Party announced that the force participated in an international operation that led to the dismantling of the HIVE group, on suspicion of attacking several Portuguese entities from which it tried to extort large sums.
Hospitals, lab testing companies, municipalities, transportation/airline companies, hotels and even technology companies are among the victims in this country.
According to PJ, it was the HIVE gang One of the largest groups of cybercriminals in the world.
He used what was described as Double extortion method », which means that before encrypting the data, it stole sensitive information from the victim’s network. The group then demanded a ransom so that the data would be decrypted and the stolen information not posted on their website, hosted on the dark web.
The investigations, which lasted several months, were conducted by several international partners, incl National Unit for Combating Cybercrime and Technological Crime (UNC3T) in PJwhich hosted one of the week-long operational working sessions, attended by more than 30 police officers from the 13 countries participating in the operation (Germany, Canada, Spain, United States, France, Ireland, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, United Kingdom, Romania, Sweden).
“The cooperation between the various international partners made it possible to identify the technological infrastructure used by the members of this criminal group, as well as the private keys used by the latter to encrypt the data of the victims,” notes a press release published today. by PJ. .
“As a result, law enforcement authorities were able to identify attacks before they occur and warn targets, obtain and distribute decryption keys to victims, and avoid nearly €120 million in ransom payments.”
In the United States, where HIV has been targeting multiple concerns, Assistant Attorney General Lisa Monaco explained the day’s news as follows: In simple terms, using legal means, we hacked hackers …”.
However, the mystery remains as to who is behind this operation.
FBI Director Christopher Wray told investigators Keep following them ” And Try to stop them.”
We don’t even know where these people are.
According to CNN, citing investigators, they ” Maybe he speaks Russian.
