A massive hack by the FBI and spy agencies in other countries has dealt a severe blow to the ransomware gangs causing panic around the world.
The ransomware it has become the biggest security threat in the last two years. Today has suffered a blow with stopping REvil, the most active and dangerous ransomware gang.
As you surely know, the ransomware It is a hacker attack that encrypts all data on victims’ hard drives. They can only be decrypted with a key that criminals sell to victims at the price of gold.
One of the most active and dangerous ransomware gangs is REvil, responsible for attacks on companies such as JBS, which processes 20% of all the meat consumed in the world, or Kaseya, a software firm whose hack forced to close thousands of small businesses, from kindergartens to dentists, as well as a chain of 800 supermarkets in Sweden.
Supposedly REvil was also behind the hack of an Apple supplier, which revealed the design of the MacBook Pros, before they were introduced.
Charging money for decryption keys REvil would have raised dozens of millions of euros. But it seems that their activity has come to an end.
As reported Reuters, “The FBI, together with the Cyber Command, the Secret Service and related countries, have carried out real disruptive actions against these ransomware groups. REvil was first on the list“.
According to independent researchers, for 4 days REvil’s pages on the Dark Web are down.
It has already happened on other occasions, but the statements of one of its leaders saying that “some of our systems have been compromised“seem to point in that direction.
Ironically, REvil could have been hacked using its own methods– Malware-infected backups that are triggered by recovering data from a backup.
The Reuters statement does not clarify whether the dismantling of REvil is only on a technical level, or they have also arrested those responsible.