They destroy Lockbit, the world’s most harmful hacker group, which hacked the Seville City Council

This information was released by officials of many countries on Tuesday. “After infiltrating the group’s network, the NCA (the British crime-fighting agency) took control of Lockbit’s services, compromising its entire criminal enterprise,” the NCA announced in a statement.

According to him, the group attacked “thousands of victims worldwide” and caused billions of dollars in losses, including ransoms and costs paid to victims. “We hack hackers,” NCA Director General Graeme Biggar said at a press conference in London announcing the deactivation of Lockbit. Lockbit focused on critical infrastructure and large industrial clusters Ransom demands range from $5.4 to $75.4 million.

Chaos of Seville

gone to Early September 2023 When the Seville City Council was hit by a cyber attack, which caused the communication networks with which various municipal organizations and services operated to collapse throughout the day. On behalf of the city council, an order was given early in the morning to shut down all computers, in response to what they had already assumed was a ‘hack’. Once the possibility of hacking was confirmed, he also asked officials to disconnect all computer equipment from the electrical network.

Hackers from Lockbit Group attacked the computer systems of Seville City Council Through an official’s computer, which created a major problem in all types of analyzes in the city council and caused very significant delays in various processes.

In the same year 2023, the group attacked a British postal operator, a Canadian children’s hospital, and in France. Corbeil-Essonnes and the Hospital of Versailles In the Paris area. Cybercriminals provided their “collaborators” with the tools and infrastructure that allowed them to carry out attacks. These included infecting victims’ computer networks to steal their data and encrypting their files.

It required a cryptocurrency ransom Decrypting and recovering information under threat of publishing victims’ data. Lockbit received a total of more than $120 million in ransom, according to the United States, where five people, including two Russian citizens, are being prosecuted.

According to the head of the NCA, the investigation did not reveal “direct support” of the Russian state towards Lockbit, but rather tolerance of cybercrime in Russia. “They are cyber criminals.” They are located all over the world. There are a large number of these individuals in Russia and they often speak Russian.”, he insisted. Lockbit is considered one of the most active malicious software in the world, with more than 2,500 victims “including hospitals, town halls and companies of all sizes,” the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

Operation permitted as per Paris Prosecutor’s Office, “Take control of a significant portion of the Lockbit software infrastructure, including the ‘Darknet’ and ‘Wall of Shame’ “where data from those who refused to pay the ransom were published”.

According to the British NCA, more than 200 accounts Several cryptocurrencies belonging to the group were frozen and investigators obtained more than 1,000 keys needed to decrypt the data to return it to its owners. In November 2022, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) called the Lockbit malware “the most active and destructive variant in the world”.