Security News > 2021 > December > Ransomware Affiliate Arrested in Romania; 51 Stolen Data Brokers Arrested in Ukraine
Europol, the European Union's premier law enforcement agency, has announced the arrest of a third Romanian national for his role as a ransomware affiliate suspected of hacking high-profile organizations and companies and stealing large volumes of sensitive data.
It's not currently known which ransomware gang the suspect was working with, but the development comes a little over a month after Romanian authorities arrested two affiliates of the REvil ransomware family, who are believed to have orchestrated no fewer than 5,000 ransomware attacks and extorted close to $600,000 from victims.
Subsequently, the affiliate deployed ransomware and siphoned troves of data from the company's customers located in the country and beyond, before proceeding to encrypting the files.
"The information stolen included the companies' financial information, personal information about employees, customers' details and other important documents," Europol said in a statement.
In a separate law enforcement action, the Cyberpolice Department of the National Police of Ukraine announced it had arrested 51 people in connection with illegally possessing about 100 databases containing personal information of more than 300 million citizens of Ukraine, Europe, and the U.S. The databases also included "Confidential information on financial and economic activities of individuals and legal entities, information about customers of banking and commercial institutions, authorization data on emails, social networks, online stores and more," the department said in a statement.
As part of the operation codenamed "DATA," the officials conducted a total of 117 searchers in various parts of the country and shut down an unnamed website that offered the stolen data - such as telephone numbers, names, and, in some cases, vehicle registration information - for sale.
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