GrandCrab ransomware operator, known to infect more than 1000 computers arrested in Belarus.
GrandCrab ransomware operator, known to infect more than 1000 computers arrested in Belarus.
A 31-year-old man, whose identity was not revealed, was arrested in Gomel, a small city in southeastern Belarus, at the intersection with the Russian and Ukraine border. The Minister of Internal Affairs of Belarus announced the arrest.
At the time of the arrest, the man had no previous criminal records but is known to be a member of a cybercrime forum to become an affiliate for the GrandCrab ransomware operation.
He allegedly borrowed access to a web panel where he tweaked settings to obtain his version of the GrandCrab ransomware, which he would later send out as a trapped file to other internet users using email spam.
He was also involved in the distribution of crypto miners and wrote code for other users on the same hacking forum.
Victims who opened the malicious files would get infected and have their data encrypted, which would further lead them to pay the ransom to receive a decryption code.
According to the officials, the suspect infected more than 1000 computers and demanded around $1,200 worth of Bitcoin. It is not known how much money he paid from this but the shared part of the paid ransoms with the GrandCrab operators.
Vladimir Zaitsev, Deputy Head of the High-Tech Crime Department of the Ministry of External Affairs, said the suspect infected victims globally around 100 countries with the most of them in India, the US, Ukraine the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Russia.
The officials said that they received help from law enforcement from the UK and Romania in tracking down the hacker.
GrandCrab ransomware
GrandCrab ransomware-as-a-service first appeared from Russian crime underground in early 2018. If the infected victim does not pay on time, he will have to pay a double ransom.
Belarusian authorities said GrandCrab ransomware made more than 54,000 victims across the world, including 156 in their country.
For the latest cyber threats and the latest hacking news please follow us on Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter.
You may be interested in reading: “BlueLeaks” Exposes Data of 200 US police Departments and Exposed Online