The US Department of Justice has announced its successful penetration of the FBI into the infrastructure of the ransomware group Alphv (Blackcat), according to a statement on their official website.
The operation enabled law enforcement agents to monitor the activities of the hackers and obtain decryption keys to access the encrypted data. This breakthrough came to light after negotiations and data leaks from the Alphv group suddenly ceased functioning on the Tor network on December 7.
Initially, the Alphv administrators attributed the disruption to hosting issues. However, it was soon revealed that the halt in operations was the result of a joint operation carried out by police and investigative agencies from the United States, Europol, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Australia, Spain, and Austria.
According to the court documents, a key factor in the success of the operation was the involvement of a confidential source who responded to the group’s public recruitment announcement. After an interview with the cybercriminals, this source obtained the account data necessary to access the ALPHV affiliate system.
Tor, known for providing secure and anonymous data transfer, functions through encrypted channels. The network is primarily built using programming languages such as C, C++, and Python.