Europol in a cooperated operation with INTERPOL, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the French National Gendarmerie, and the Ukrainian National Police, has arrested two ransomware operators in Ukraine. According to a press release, the operators demanded from victims ransoms between €5 to €70 million.
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The arrested, whose names remain undisclosed, suspected of having committed a string of targeted attacks against "very large industrial groups in Europe and North America from April 2020 onwards."
"The criminals would deploy malware and steal sensitive data from these companies, before encrypting their files," Europol said.
As a result, the regulators have seized seized $ 375 000 in cash, two luxury cars worth ~$252,000, and $1.3 million in cryptocurrencies. In October last year, Europol said in a report that the growing popularity of Wasabi and Samourai Bitcoin mixing wallets makes investigating activity in the darknet a really difficult task. Both wallets use CoinJoin technology to anonymize transactions with bitcoin (EXANTE: Bitcoin).
The agency emphasized that some darkweb markets were trying to integrate CoinJoin-compatible wallets as their default payment option.
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