IT Home on December 20, according to foreign media BleepingComputer reports, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is engaged in a "tug of war" with the BlackCat hacker team, the FBI previously announced that "it successfully raided the BlackCat hacker team on December 7" and shut down the hacker's website that "publishes victim data information", but then the BlackCat hacker team claimed on the dark web that it had "recovered the website".
▲ Image source: Foreign media BleepingComputer (the same below)
▲ The hacking website that was previously shut down by the FBI
▲ The hacker then announced that he had "taken back the website"
IT Home has learned that BlackCat is a "notorious" hacker team that specializes in using ransomware to encrypt victims' computers and ask for virtual currency to unlock them, and has allegedly extorted hundreds of millions of dollars in ransoms around the world.
Originally founded in 2020 as "DarkSide" and later renamed "BlackMatter", the team was successfully cracked by security firm Emsisoft and the police in mid-2021, but the team made a comeback at the end of 2021 and changed its name to "BlackCat".
It is reported that in the raid launched on December 7, the FBI successfully took control of a data center of the hacker, but now the FBI and the hacker team have the key to register the URL of the website, so the two sides will also show a tug-of-war in the future, taking turns to "take over" control of the website.
Today, hackers claim on the dark web that the FBI actually "controls only one data center" and that the others are still in the hands of hackers. While the FBI managed to obtain unlock keys for 400 victim companies, the hackers still had keys for more than 3,000 companies.
The hackers also claimed that "they will retaliate against the FBI's actions" and that in the future, the team "will carry out attacks on critical facilities such as hospitals and nuclear power plants", in addition to suspending the "unlocking service" and that the victim company will "never get the unlock key back".