Hackers who hacked into 1500 government agencies in 80 countries detained by FBI

U.S. law enforcement agencies, together with Germany and the Netherlands, have dismantled one of the largest ransomware networks, Hive, and recovered the stolen digital assets of most victims.

According to representatives of the US Department of Justice, the joint operation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to destroy the international group of crypto-criminals was successful. The hackers attacked schools, banks, and hospitals in more than 80 countries. Since June 2021, approximately 1,500 institutions around the world have become victims, and the attackers themselves have earned more than $ 100 million in cryptocurrencies.

What was the hackers' scheme? First, they stole confidential data from emails, documents, and files and encrypted them. Then they demanded a ransom in bitcoins from the owners of this information to ensure that the data was deleted from the hackers' archives and that confidentiality was maintained. If the victims refused to pay, the Hive ransomware published all the stolen data on the darknet.

The FBI managed to penetrate the Hive network back in July 2022, and since then, law enforcement has found and seized more than 1,300 decryption keys to help victims recover their money. Law enforcement agencies in Germany and the Netherlands coordinated the operation, taking control of the fraudsters' services and websites, which helped to destroy Hive.

The elimination of the Hive network is not the only successful operation by the FBI to combat cryptocurrency criminals. In July 2022, the Estonian police, together with FBI specialists, detained two founders of the HashFlare bitcoin cloud miner. Sergey Potapenko and Ivan Turygin are suspected of cryptocurrency fraud worth $ 575 million. According to the information gathered during the investigation, the Estonian citizens operated a Ponzi scheme, using the money of new investors to pay those who had invested in HashFlare earlier.