Katherine Jackson and Rafael Sutter
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States on Wednesday offered a reward of up to $15 million for information on the leaders of the notorious Lockbit cybercrime gang, as Ukrainian police announced the arrest of a father-son duo believed to be involved in the gang.
The developments are the latest in a series of international law enforcement actions against Lockbit, the leader of online gangs that encrypt victims’ data to extort money.
The US, UK and EU announced this week that they had disrupted the group in an unusually aggressive international law enforcement operation that targeted it with its own hacking site. Officials used the hijacked web page to taunt hackers with upcoming data releases and a tool for victims of the ransom-seeking gang to decrypt their data for free. The US also introduced sanctions and charges against two of the group’s key militants.
In a statement, the State Department said it would offer up to $15 million for information leading to the arrests and convictions of the extortion ring’s leaders.
Ukrainian police have not identified the father-son pair but said they have seized more than 200 cryptocurrency accounts and 34 servers used by the gang in the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, France, Switzerland, Australia, the US and the UK.
The killing was one of the most spectacular in recent memory, partly due to police trolling. But with many of the key hackers considered beyond the reach of Western law enforcement, experts say it is a matter of time before those behind Lockbit resume their activities or move on to new gangs of cybercriminals.
“While there have been a few arrests, most have been technical glitches,” said Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at Secureworks. He noted that much of the damage to Lockbit was caused by “affiliates,” the small hacking groups that carried out the initial hacks. He said those hackers are “still out there and out to do their thing.”
“The threat may be temporarily reduced, but branches continue to pose a problem,” Pilling said.