The police are taking systems from the internationally operating Hive hacker gang offline

In an international operation, in which the Dutch police also took part, the systems of the criminal hacker group Hive were taken down.

The hacker group used the systems to attack companies and organizations and to steal money from them via so-called ransomware (hostage program). Since June 2021, more than 1,500 companies in more than 80 countries have fallen victim to Hive ransomware and nearly $100 million in ransom has been paid, he says. europol.

It is not known where the perpetrators live. There were also no reports of arrests.

The FBI and Europol, among others, collaborated on this work. Meetings were held in Portugal and the Netherlands. It is not revealed exactly how the cooperating countries managed to shut down the servers. “The hackers were hacked by the FBI,” said Deputy US Attorney General Lisa Monaco.

The Hive software was reportedly used in an attack on, among others All European branches of Mediamarket. A hospital also fell victim to a digital attack. As a result, the hospital could only use analog resources to treat patients and was temporarily unable to accept new patients. Europol does not say which hospital it is, but it may be related to a group of hospitals in the US state of Illinois.

In a ransomware attack, the company’s systems are locked down and the criminals demand money to undo it. During the police work, the detectives also found the keys to undo the hostage-taking. As a result, many “hostage” companies have been able to recover their data without paying for it. As a result, almost 120 million euros would not have fallen into the hands of criminals.