The litany of high-profile ransomware attacks in recent years is indeed sobering, and LockBit was the biggest pirate across the globe.
With its massive infrastructure and resources, the criminal group has been responsible for as much as 22% of all ransomware attacks across the world, according to a recently released report from NCC Group. The organization’s criminals soaked in about $120 million in ransom payments and tried to extort hundreds of millions more.
Perhaps the most significant victory about LockBit’s disruption was the discovery of keys that will help victims regain access to their data. And the Cyber Division of the U.K.’s National Crime Agency managed to reverse engineer the malware so victims could receive some mitigation rather than the attackers simply being punished.
It also highlights the scope of international cooperation that will be necessary to produce successful takedowns of scope and put a dent in aspirations of these cyber criminals.
There is also some important work that security officers at organizations should embark on during this brief prosecution milestone. Read more about that in our lead story this week.