The bureau is trying to take the fight to foreign ransomware gangs, even if it means giving up on bringing some of them behind bars.
Hive was once one of the world’s most prolific criminal syndicates, notorious for shutting down the networks of American schools, businesses and health care facilities. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesWhen the FBI took down a notorious cybercrime gang known as Hive earlier this year, it did so without arresting a single person.
The FBI estimates it saved victims across the globe roughly $130 million with the sting — a feat that proves the effectiveness of the approach, said Adam Hickey, the deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s national security division at the time of the Hive takedown. “You’d have to be a gorilla to think that putting people in jail is the only way to counter the cyber threat,” said Hickey, now a partner at law firm Mayer Brown.
“It’s highly unlikely you’ll be able to stop ‘ransomware’ groups from resurfacing in a meaningful way.”The FBI is “doing the best with what they have,” Minder said. Still, “it’s fairly simple for these folks to spin back up again.” Over the next 18 months, Hive launched upward of 1,500 attacks across the globe and collected roughly $100 million in cryptocurrency from its victims, according to estimates from U.S. law enforcement. The group expanded so fast, in part, by turning ruthlessness into a powerful engine of growth, targeting organizations, such as hospitals and health care providers, that other cybercriminals had declared off limits.
The coup nonetheless presented the FBI with a remarkable opportunity: the power to identify Hive’s victims as soon as the group attacked them, and then pass them the same decryption keys they needed to restore their networks.Crenshaw’s team became so good at offering technical assistance to victims it eventually gave itself a sly nickname, Crenshaw said: “Hive helpdesk.
It’s a tradeoff the bureau believes is worth it, especially given the risk that arrests may never come. Hive is believed to operate safely from within Russia, like many other ransomware gangs today.
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