Ireland’s Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau has announced that it had “seized several domains” used in the ransomware attack on the Irish Health Service Executive (HSE) earlier this year.
The attack, which took place in mid-May, forced the national health and social services provider to shut down its entire IT system, which lead to appointments being delayed or cancelled. The Irish Department of Health was also targeted but managed to prevent Conti from encrypting its network.
On Sunday, almost four months after the attack, the Garda’s cyber crime unit confirmed that it had disrupted the IT infrastructure of the Conti hacking group, which had claimed responsibility for the attack. Thought to be deployed by a Russian group known as Wizard Spider, Conti functions as a type of ransomware as a service (RaaS) operation.
“The Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau have seized several domains used in this and other ransomware attacks,” a Garda spokesperson told IT Pro, adding that the seizure “has directly prevented a large number of further ransomware attacks across the world”.
The Bureau has also notified potential victims of the ransomware gang and is working with Europol and Interpol to ensure that other states are aware of the systems targeted by Conti.
RELATED RESOURCE
The ultimate law enforcement agency guide to going mobile
Best practices for implementing a mobile device program
A Garda spokesperson described the operation as “crime prevention”, adding that to date there had been “a total of 753 attempts (...) made by ICT systems across the world to connect to the seized domains”.
“In each instance, the seizure of these domains by the GNCCB investigation team is likely to have prevented a Conti Ransomware Attack on the connecting ICT system, by rendering the initially deployed malware on the victims system, as ineffective,” they said.
HSE wasn’t the only healthcare provider targeted by the Conti ransomware group. Days after the attack was reported, the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) found that the gang had also attempted to breach 16 US services, including law enforcement agencies, 911 dispatch services and municipalities, with the attempted attacks all taking place since May 2020.
The FBI Cyber Division stated that the targeted healthcare and first responder networks were “among the more than 400 organisations worldwide victimised by Conti”, out of which “over 290” are based in the US.
-
Prolific ransomware operator added to Europe’s Most Wanted list as US dangles $10 million rewardNews The US Department of Justice is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the arrest of Volodymyr Viktorovych Tymoshchuk, an alleged ransomware criminal.
-
Jaguar Land Rover “did the right thing” shutting down systems to thwart cyber attackNews The attack on Jaguar Land Rover highlights the growing attractiveness of the automotive sector
-
Ransomware attack on IT supplier disrupts hundreds of Swedish municipalitiesNews The attack on IT systems supplier Miljödata has impacted public sector services across the country
-
A notorious hacker group is ramping up cloud-based ransomware attacksNews The Storm-0501 threat group is refining its tactics, according to Microsoft, shifting away from traditional endpoint-based attacks and toward cloud-based ransomware.
-
Security researchers have just identified what could be the first ‘AI-powered’ ransomware strain – and it uses OpenAI’s gpt-oss-20b modelNews Using OpenAI's gpt-oss:20b model, ‘PromptLock’ generates malicious Lua scripts via the Ollama API.
-
Data I/O shuts down systems in wake of ransomware attack
News Regulatory filings by Data I/O suggest the costs of dealing with the attack could be significant
-
Average ransom payment doubles in a single quarterNews Targeted social engineering and data exfiltration have become the biggest tactics as three major ransomware groups dominate
-
BlackSuit ransomware gang taken down in latest law enforcement sting – but members have already formed a new groupNews The notorious gang has seen its servers taken down and bitcoin seized, but may have morphed into a new group called Chaos
