LockBit and its affiliates have targeted governments, major companies, schools and hospitals, causing billions of dollars of damage and extracting tens of millions in ransoms from victims.
Typically, their programmes – once inserted by the ransomware operator into a target’s IT systems – are manipulated to freeze, via encryption, the target’s files and data.
The United States, Britain and Australia last month unveiled sanctions against the leader of LockBit, which they accuse of extorting billions of dollars from thousands of victims.
The group was responsible for a quarter of all ransomware attacks worldwide last year and has extorted “over US$1 billion from thousands of victims globally”, according to the UK government.
The top five countries hit by LockBit were the United States, Britain, France, Germany and China, according to Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency.
