Suspects from the online extortion gang, DD4BC, have been apprehended with the joint forces of Interpol, Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Germany, working together to crack the group.
According to several reports, Europol has arrested a main target and have caught another member from the online extortion group that threatened to erase the websites if they did not give them money.
DD4BC, which stands for Distributed Denial of Service for Bitcoin, hacks webistes and knocks them offline by sending an overwhelming amount of traffic. The name is derived after the name of the cyber attack. The online attackers hold these websites for ransom and ask for notes with their threats, including money to be given in Bitcoin form.
The suspects were caught after a series of raids. Forces from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Germany, Austria, and Scotland Yard detectives worked side-by-side to carry out the said operations.
In September 2015, a report from Akamai, an Internet firm based in Cambridge, Massachussets, first alleged that DD4BC had done more than 140 attacks for the past 10 months, particularly on banks, gaming firms, and media groups. Europol added that "key members of the organized network" were found and tracked to Bosnia-Herzegovina by members of the Metropolitan Police, who first worked with the European Union's enforcement agency.
According to Akamai, which sole purpose as a company is to provide protection against cyber crimes, ransom requests from the said group started at 25 bitcoin, which is equivalent to about $11,200, as reported by Marketwatch.
The raids took place on December 15 and 16, when officers from Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Germany, as well as policemen from the United Kingdom were assisted on "Operation Pleiades" by their Australian, French, Japanese, Romanian, American and Swiss colleagues. Interpol also aided on the operations, as Europol added.
In an official statement released on Tuesday, it said that the raids were successful in terms of gathering evidence that can be used against the main target and the secondary suspect.
"[The operations] resulted in the arrest of a main target and one more suspect detained. Multiple property searches were carried out and an extensive amount of evidence was seized," carried out the statement, as reported by BBC.
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