European and North American police on Wednesday took control of the infrastructure behind a massive network used by criminals to commit cybercrimes, reports AP.
Why does it matter: By claiming the infrastructure, authorities have dealt a major blow to cyber criminals using Emotet – one of the world’s largest hijacked computer networks – to install ransomware as part of extortion schemes and financial theft.
Context: Ransomware criminals have damaged health systems and governments with the help of hijacked computer networks such as Emotet.
- Ransomware works by shuffling a victim’s data, allowing criminals to ask for money in exchange for decryption software to repair the data.
The whole picture: The European Union police and the judicial agencies Europol and Eurojus, two agencies based in The Hague, coordinated the operation with authorities in the Netherlands, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Lithuania, Canada and Ukraine.
In the meantime: The FBI announced Wednesday that it has arrested a Canadian as part of an attempt to disrupt the NetWalker ransomware tape, which he said targeted the healthcare industry. Included in custody was the confiscation of nearly half a million dollars in cryptocurrency.
Thought bubble, by Zach Dorfman of the Aspen Institute: The large number of countries involved and the scale of the operation and the headaches of coordination show how serious a challenge cyber criminal groups and botnets have become.
- As Wired notes, it was a “global effort” that led to the elimination of command and control infrastructure in 90 countries.
- And unlike a joint public-private action last year aimed at preventing the massive Trickbot botnet, the move against Emotet seems to aim to crush it permanently.
Go deeper: Growth and growth of ransomware