Police take systems of internationally operating hacker gang Hive offline

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

The group of hackers used the systems to attack companies and organizations and steal money from them via so-called ransomware (hostage software). Since June 2021, more than 1,500 businesses in over 80 countries have fallen victim to Hive ransomware and nearly $100 million in ransoms have been paid, according to Europol.

It is not known where the perpetrators live. No arrests are reported either.

The FBI and Europol, among others, cooperated in the action. Meetings took place in Portugal and the Netherlands. Exactly how the cooperating countries managed to take the servers offline has not been disclosed. US Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco says “the hackers were hacked by the FBI”.

The Hive software was allegedly used in an attack against, among others all European branches of Mediamarkt. A hospital was also the victim of 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 specify which hospital it is, but it is probably a hospital group in the US state of Illinois.

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