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Image credit: Capcom | Street Fighter 6
When ransomware group Ragnar Locker stole Capcom's data in 2020, we learned about Dragon's Dogma 2, Street Fighter 6, and other then-upcoming games. The group took around 1 TB of data, including personal and corporate information of employees, financial details, and developer documents. Ragnar Locker, as expected, wanted money from Capcom for keeping the information secret, but its journey has now come to a predictable end.
European law enforcement and judicial authorities, coordinated by Europol and Eurojust, arrested the “key target” of the group in Paris on October 16. The main perpetrator has been brought in front of the Paris Judicial Court, and five suspects have also been interviewed in Spain and Latvia.
Moreover, Ragnar Locker's infrastructure has been seized in the Netherlands, Germany, and Sweden. This is the result of a complex investigation led by authorities from 11 countries, including Ukraine, Spain, Japan, and the USA.
Ragnar Locker is not only the name of the group but also of the ransomware it developed and operated to attack different infrastructure, "having most recently claimed the attacks against the Portuguese national carrier and a hospital in Israel," according to Europol.
It would target Microsoft Windows and exploit exposed services like Remote Desktop Protocol to gain access to the system to then demand payments for decryption tools as well as for the non-release of the data stolen.
"This investigation shows that once again international cooperation is the key to taking ransomware groups down," said the Head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, Edvardas Šileris. "Prevention and security are improving, however ransomware operators continue to innovate and find new victims. Europol will play its role in supporting EU Member States as they target these groups, and each case is helping us improve our modes of investigation and our understanding of these groups. I hope this round of arrests sends a strong message to ransomware operators who think they can continue their attacks without consequence."
Hackers stealing data from big corporations is nothing new: NVIDIA had to deal with a cyber attack from Lapsus$ last year, and it was a "wake-up call" for it. Recently, Sony Interactive Entertainment also suffered a data breach, which led to unauthorized access to their personal information.
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