The Judicial Police announced this Thursday that it was part of an international police cooperation that dismantled the operation of the HIVE cybercriminal group, one of the most active in the world.
“The group responsible for the HIVE ransomware was one of the most relevant cybercriminal groups worldwide, being suspected of having attacked Portuguese entities as diverse as hospital units, laboratory analysis companies, municipalities, transport/aviation companies, hotel units, companies technologies, among others, explains the PJ in a statement.
The Portuguese authority explains that “this group used the double extortion method, that is, before encrypting the data, the group exfiltrated sensitive data from the victim’s network” and then “demanded a ransom for the data to be decrypted and the exfiltrated information was not published on the website of the HIVE group, hosted on the Dark Web”.
“The investigations, which lasted several months, were carried out by various international partners, with the PJ/UNC3T hosting one of the week-long operational work sessions, which was attended by more than 30 police officers from the 13 countries involved in the investigation. the operation.”, reports the Portuguese police.
This cooperation “made it possible to identify the technological infrastructure used by the members of this criminal group, as well as the private keys they use to encrypt the data of the victims”, and the actions of the police “deprived the criminal group of the means to launch cyberattacks “.
“The timely exchange of the private keys of each of the victims helped to decrypt the data of more than 1,500 victims of the HIVE group around the world”, avoiding the payment of “about 120 million euros” in ransoms.
“Some of the victims who received help from the authorities were based in Portugal,” says the PJ.
Source: TSF
