U.S. says it ‘hacked the hackers’ to bring down ransomware gang, helping 300 victims

by | Jan 26, 2023

The FBI revealed this week that they had taken down a ransomware gang by… get this… hacking them. In what appears to be one of the first instances that we’ve seen, our own government hackers broke into the bad guy servers and stole the digital keys to unlock the ransomware. This shows that the playing field is being changed against the black hats. No arrests have been made, and the whole situation is evolving. The downside is that many members of this group, called Hive Ransomware, are only being slowed down, and they will likely move around to other groups, taking their expertise to other bidders.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The FBI on Thursday revealed it had secretly hacked and disrupted a prolific ransomware gang called Hive, a maneuver that allowed the bureau to thwart the group from collecting more than $130 million in ransomware demands from more than 300 victims. At a news conference, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Deputy U.S. Attorney General Lisa Monaco said government hackers broke into Hive’s network and put the gang under surveillance, surreptitiously stealing the digital keys the group used to unlock victim organizations’ data. They were then able to alert victims in advance so they could take steps to protect their systems before Hive demanded the payments.

Found at finance.yahoo.com