The Dutch police, together with German colleagues and the American FBI, have taken down a large ransomware network. The network Hive had hacked more than 1500 companies since June last year, in eighty different countries. It made a profit of at least 100 million euros, says Europol.
The European police service calls the Hive network “a major threat” because it caused the data of hundreds of companies to be blocked. They only got their data back if they transferred large sums of money. If they did not pay, stolen data would be published on the darknet. There are many other networks with the same approach, but Hive was one of the better known.
The hackers gained access to data through phishing emails, but also through holes in company security. In addition to companies, governments and telecom companies were also victims, as were companies in the healthcare sector. A hospital in the US state of Louisiana came to a standstill. That happened during the Covid pandemic, which had serious consequences for public health. According to Europol, the hospital had to resort to analogue systems and could not admit new patients.
Keys
The FBI already gained access to Hive in July last year, and with it the codes to decrypt data. These were sent to affected companies so that they did not have to transfer money. According to Europol, this prevented around 120 million euros from being sent to criminals.
There are two groups behind Hive: the developers who build the ransomware, and the people who carry out the attacks. As far as is known, no arrests have been made. The police have not yet announced how many companies and institutions in the Netherlands have been targeted by Hive. According to the German authorities, there have been at least 70 successful attacks in that country.
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