The McAfee Labs Advanced Threat Research team aided law enforcement in the arrest of suspected cybercrime gang linked to top malware CTB Locker.
CTB Locker was one of the largest ransomware families and was the top spot in that category in 2016, after notorious CryptoLocker was taken down as part of Operation Tovar.
After a massive campaign was launched in 2016 against the Netherlands, the Dutch High Tech Crime Unit contacted McAfee’s Advanced Threat Research team to assist in the investigation.
The McAfee team provided key malware samples and answered questions that helped in the investigation and ultimately led to the arrests of the cyber gang suspects behind the CTB Locker ransomware campaign.
What was also interesting is the cybercriminals were allegedly linked to the distribution of the Cerber ransomware family as well.
On the morning of December 14, the authorities raided six homes in East Romania as part of Operation “Bakovia” and seized a significant number of hard-drives, laptops, external-storage, crypto-currency mining rigs, and hundreds of SIM cards.
The suspects were arrested for allegedly spreading CTB Locker. Additional suspects allegedly responsible for spreading Cerber were nabbed at the Bucharest airport, McAfee reports.
The action underscores the tremendous value of public-private partnerships.