The FBI continues to take action against the APT group ALPHV alias BlackCat. The FBI briefly blocked the group's leak page on the dark web. Now it's open again and ALPHV announces in Russian that 3.000 companies will never receive the keys to their ransomware.
There has never been a more open exchange of blows between the FBI and an APT group. The FBI published a statement saying that it had taken over various ALPHV servers and was now making a decryption tool available to 500 victims. “By dismantling the BlackCat ransomware group, the Department of Justice has hacked the hackers again,” said Assistant Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco.
🔎 The ALPHV leak page on the darknet was first confiscated by the FBI (Image: B2B-C-S).
“With a decryption tool that the FBI made available to hundreds of ransomware victims worldwide, businesses and schools were able to reopen and health and emergency services were able to come back online. We will continue to prioritize disruption and put victims at the heart of our strategy to disrupt the ecosystem that fuels cybercrime.”
ALPHV counters this with threats
On the darknet, the FBI had marked the leak page with a note saying that the site had been "seized". Just a few hours later, ALPHV regained control of the site and "seized" it again. Apparently, the FBI and APLHV have the necessary access keys for the site and cannot block each other.
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🔎 But ALPHV was able to unlock the leak page again and, in its own words, “confiscated” it (Image: B2B-CS).
On the unblocked page, ALPHV provides the address for a new leak site that the FBI does not have access to. The group also makes a rather blatant threat in Russian that they now know the FBI's route to gaining access. The group then goes on to declare war: "The maximum they (editor's note: "the FBI") have is the keys for the last month and a half, that is, about 400 companies, but now more than 3.000 companies will never receive their keys." The threat continues: "Because of your actions, we are introducing new rules, or rather, we are removing ALL rules... Thank you for your experience, we will take our mistakes into account and work even harder, we are waiting for your whining in chats and requests for discounts that are no longer available."
New leak site is online – but only 6 victims
The new leak page is now online, but it currently only shows 6 new victims of the ransomware group. The extent to which the entire ALPHV ecosystem was destroyed by the FBI is still unclear. But the FBI has already proven several times that it is not a toothless tiger. That's what happened dismantling the Ragnar Locker ransomware gang, QBot or Qakbot network dissolved or last HIVE members arrested.
More at Justice.gov
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