Police Arrest Trio in Multimillion-Dollar Extortion Case

3 Dutch guys have been arrested on suspicion of participating in a key cyber-extortion marketing campaign impacting tens of thousands and thousands of victims.

A 21-12 months-aged from Zandvoort is the primary suspect, alongside a 21-yr-previous from Rotterdam and an 18-12 months-previous of no fixed abode, in accordance to the Dutch police.

An investigation into their alleged functions began in March 2021 and uncovered evidence of attacks on countless numbers of companies – each domestic and global.

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After gaining preliminary obtain into targeted providers and thieving delicate consumer details, the guys allegedly extorted their victims by threatening to damage their “digital infrastructure” or to leak the information publicly, in a related method to ransomware actors.

Even so, Dutch police claimed that “in a lot of cases” the hackers bought the stolen details even after receiving a ransom payment.

Ransom demands ended up in the €100,000–€700,0000 ($106,000–$740,000) assortment, with one particular report claiming the primary suspect created as considerably as €2.5m ($2.6m) above the earlier couple of many years.

Amid the information stolen by the trio are names, addresses and telephone figures, dates of birth, financial institution account figures, credit history card facts, passwords, license plate numbers, nationwide ID quantities and passport knowledge, the police claimed.

These attacks caused economic and reputational hurt to the compromised corporations and distress to the individuals whose information and facts was stolen and sold on the cybercrime underground.

Among the people breached have been hospitality corporations, schooling institutes, on-line shops, software package companies and even social media vendors, the police claimed.

Right after it is taken from the breached companies, captured info is significantly processed in advance of onward sale, to increase further more value to cyber-criminals seeking to use it for follow-on phishing or fraud.

“The investigation displays that a distinctive pc code is employed to refine stolen facts,” the law enforcement report unveiled.

“Stolen databases are manufactured specially acceptable by this kind of facts refining to strategy precisely picked victims for, for case in point, phishing, chat tips, financial institution assist desk fraud or id fraud. For case in point, a databases can be filtered on Dutch persons born in the 1940s and 1950s.”