Europol Dismantles Ragnar Locker Ransomware Infrastructure, Nabs Key Developer

Europol on Friday announced the takedown of the infrastructure associated with Ragnar Locker ransomware, alongside the arrest of a “key target” in France.

“In an action carried out between 16 and 20 October, searches were conducted in Czechia, Spain, and Latvia,” the agency said. “The main perpetrator, suspected of being a developer of the Ragnar group, has been brought in front of the examining magistrates of the Paris Judicial Court.”

Five other accomplices associated with the ransomware gang are said to have been interviewed in Spain and Latvia, with the servers and the data leak portal seized in the Netherlands, Germany, and Sweden.

The effort is the latest coordinated exercise involving authorities from Czechia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Latvia, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, and the U.S. Two suspects associated with the ransomware crew were previously arrested from Ukraine in 2021. A year later, another member was apprehended in Canada.

Ragnar Locker, which first emerged in December 2019, is known for a string of attacks targeting critical infrastructure entities across the world. According to Eurojust, the group has committed attacks against 168 international companies worldwide since 2020.

“The Ragnar Locker group was known to employ a double extortion tactic, demanding extortionate payments for decryption tools as well as for the non-release of the sensitive data stolen,” Europol said.

Ukraine’s Cyber Police said it conducted raids at one of the suspected members’ premises in Kyiv, confiscating laptops, mobile phones and electronic media.

The law enforcement action coincides with the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance (UCA) infiltrating and shutting down the leak site run by the Trigona ransomware group and wiping out 10 of the servers, but not before exfiltrating the data stored in them. There is evidence to suggest that the Trigona actors used Atlassian Confluence for their activities.

Just as the dismantling of Hive and Ragnar Locker represents ongoing efforts to tackle the ransomware menace, so are the initiatives undertaken by threat actors to evolve and rebrand under new names. Hive, for instance, has resurfaced as Hunters International.

The development…