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The organized crime group that used these malwares is known for breaking into business and private networks using a range of infiltration techniques, and then deploying ransomware against their victims, INTERPOL said in a statement published on the same day. The ransomware then encrypts files which are used to blackmail companies and people into paying huge ransoms, it added.
“Our message today is clear. The United States, together with our allies, will do everything in our power to identify the perpetrators of ransomware attacks, to bring them to justice, and to recover the funds they have stolen from their victims,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement about the arrests.
From 2019 onwards, several large international corporations have faced severe cyber attacks, which deployed the Sodinokibi/REvil ransomware. France, Germany, Romania, Europol and Eurojust reinforced the actions against this ransomware by setting up a Joint Investigation Team in May 2021.
Since February 2021, law enforcement authorities have arrested three other affiliates of Sodinokibi/REvil and two suspects connected to GandCrab as part of “Operation GoldDust,” Europol says. The Sodinokibi/REvil ransomware family is viewed as the successor of GandCrab, which was one of the world’s most prolific ransomware families with more than a million victims worldwide.
In February, April and October 2021, authorities in South Korea arrested three affiliates involved in the GandCrab and Sodinokibi/REvil ransomware families, which had more than 1,500 victims. On Nov. 4, Kuwaiti authorities arrested another GandGrab affiliate, meaning a total of seven suspects linked to the two ransomware families have been arrested since February 2021. They are suspected of attacking about 7,000 victims in total.
Europol does not name the two people who were arrested by Romanian authorities in its statement, but it says in the beginning of October, a Sodinokibi/REvil affiliate was arrested at the Polish border after an international arrest warrant was issued by the U.S. This individual, the statement says, was a Ukrainian national suspected of perpetrating the Kaseya attack, which leaves no doubt that it is talking about Vasinskyi.
The DOJ in its statement quoted Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Christopher Wray as saying: “The arrest of Yaroslav Vasinskyi, the charges against Yevgeniy Polyanin and seizure of $6.1 million of his assets, and the arrests of two other Sodinokibi/REvil actors in Romania are the culmination of close collaboration with our international, U.S. government and especially our private sector partners.”
These arrests are some of the results of Operation GoldDust, the Europol statement says, which involved 17 countries including the United States, and the Europol, Eurojust and INTERPOL. The Europol-INTERPOL section of the operation was coordinated from INTERPOL’s Cyber Fusion Centre in Singapore. Research from Chainalysis found that criminals made $350 million in 2020 from ransomware payments, representing an increase of 311% in one year, according to the INTERPOL statement. Over the same period, the average ransom payment increased by 171% per Palo Alto Networks, the statement adds.
Bitdefender, in collaboration with law enforcement, made a tool available on the No More Ransom website that would help victims of Sodinokibi/REvil restore their files and recover from attacks made before July 2021, Europol says. Currently, No More Ransom has decryption tools for GandCrab (V1, V4 and V5 up to V5.2 versions) and for Sodinokibi/REvil. The Sodinokibi/REvil decryption tools helped more than 1400 companies decrypt their networks.
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