The Hive ransomware which had extorted more than US$100 million from 1,500 victims worldwide have been shut down

According to a statement from the US Justice Department on Thursday, the Hive ransomware operation, which had extorted more than US$100 million from more than 1,500 victims worldwide, has been shut down (January 26).

The Department of Justice has destroyed ‘an international ransomware network responsible for extorting and attempting to extort hundreds of millions of dollars from victims,’ according to a statement from US Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday.

According to US Attorney General Merrick Garland, the servers and website for Hive were taken over by US law officials along with Dutch and German law enforcement after around seven months of penetration.

Due to the invasion, companies were able to avoid having to pay extortion demands for US$130 million that were made after Hive hacked and frozen their data systems.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco called the operation to infiltrate Hive a ’21st-century cyber stakeout’. ‘We hacked the hackers,’ she said.

Hive functioned as a ransomware service, which let anybody use its software and other services to break into and accept payments for a target’s IT systems. Hive and the client would split the extortion’s profits.