The US Justice Department said that the FBI has brought down an international ransomware network named Hive that extracted more than $100 million from hospitals and other organizations around the world.
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The ransomware group targeted more than 1,500 victims, including hospitals, school districts and financial firms in more than 80 countries. Hive used a “ransomware-as-a-service” model in which highly skilled developers build the malware and then recruit less-sophisticated affiliates to deploy them against victims.
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Attorney General Merrick Garland said Hive affiliates targeted “critical infrastructure and some of our nation’s most important industries.” In 2021, Hive affiliates attacked a Midwest hospital’s network, preventing the medical facility from accepting new patients. The hospital was able to recover its data only after paying a ransom, the attorney general said.
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FBI agents infiltrated Hive from July 2022 until its seizure, covertly capturing its decryption keys and sharing them with victims, saving the targets $130 million in ransom payments. The FBI provided more than 300 victims with decryption keys, among them a Texas school district, a Louisiana hospital, and a food services company that had been asked to make millions of dollars in ransom payments. The FBI also distributed more than 1,000 additional decryption keys to previous Hive victims.
