The coordinated action of the FBI, the Attorney General, and several international police and intelligence agencies has allowed the dangerous Hive group, a group of cybercriminals who had become a nightmare for various American and foreign organizations, to be eliminated.
Since 2021, when the attacks began, they have been seeking ways to eliminate this hive, which introduced ransomware into the computers and personal networks of various organizations in order to steal their passwords, block their systems, and then demand a ransom. Using this method, they are estimated to have attacked more than 1,500 victims in 80 countries and obtained around 100 million dollars. This group of criminals roamed freely on the “dark web,” forcing the FBI to use unorthodox methods. Agents realized that they had to use their own methods, so they hired some of the world’s best computer experts. In July 2022, they managed to infiltrate the network and capture their decryption keys, which they gradually offered to about 300 victims who had already been blackmailed but had not yet paid the 130 million they had already agreed upon. In addition, they also provided more than 1,000 additional passwords to previous victims of this group, with the goal of ensuring that they would not be attacked again.
Once potential targets were protected, the next phase began: destroying the hive. The FBI, the German Federal Criminal Police, and the High Technology Crime Unit of the Netherlands took control of the servers, networks, and websites that the organization used to communicate with each other, thus ending its effective ability to attack and extort its victims.
The latest data on cybercrime in the United States shows an exponential increase in this type of ransomware attack in recent years, especially since the confinements that forced millions of people worldwide to stay at home and work remotely.