Ukraine, like everybody else, is fed up with all the hacking that’s been going on. The country’s national police have arrested several members of the hacker group ‘Cl0P’, according to a statement issued by Ukrainian National Police earlier this week.
If you can’t read Ukrainian, the statement explains that the country’s Cyber Police Department worked with Interpol and law enforcement officers from South Korea and the US in a joint international operation to catch these crooks.
Ransomware pays off, crime, not so much
The law enforcement officers carried out some 21 successful raids in the Kyiv region and seized about UAH 5 million, or R2.6 million, in computer equipment, cars and cash.
These arrests, a first for a national law enforcement agency, will hopefully encourage other countries to act against threats of this nature in the future.
Cl0P is one of many ransomware groups that seek to make their money by gaining access to a company’s network, encrypting their data and then charging them for the decryption key. They have also been known to threaten to release or sell sensitive information should their victims not comply. CD Projekt Red is but one recent example of such a tactic.
Source: Ars Technica
