Four Russian nationals have been arrested for their alleged involvement in the 8Base ransomware group after a joint police operation by 14 countries.
The suspects were arrested in Phuket, Thailand, and charged with a number of offenses, potentially carrying decades in prison. At the same time, 27 servers linked to the criminal network were taken down.
The gang was deploying a variant of Phobos ransomware to extort large payments from victims across Europe, the US, and beyond, authorities said.
First detected in December 2018, Phobos ransomware has been widely used in large-scale attacks against businesses and organizations worldwide.
8Base is believed to have targeted more than 1,000 public and private bodies, raking in more than $16 million in ransom payments in all.
"Unlike high-profile ransomware groups that target major corporations, Phobos relies on high-volume attacks against small to medium-sized businesses, which often lack the cybersecurity defences to protect themselves," said Europol.
"Its Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) model has made it particularly accessible to a range of criminal actors, from individual affiliates to structured criminal groups such as 8Base."
8Base developed its own variant of the ransomware, using its encryption and delivery mechanisms to tailor attacks and cause the biggest impact possible.
Who are 8Base?
It has been particularly aggressive in its use of double extortion techniques, which involve both encrypting victims' data and threatening to publish stolen information unless a ransom is paid.
As a result, the group has been the focus of action by international law enforcement for a while. A key Phobos affiliate was arrested in Italy in 2023, for example, while last summer an administrator was arrested in South Korea and extradited to the US.
Two of the four people arrested this week have now been charged in the US for their part in the group: Roman Berezhnoy, 33, and Egor Nikolaevich Glebov, 39, both of whom are Russian nationals.
They are accused of carrying out ransomware attacks between May 2019 and at least October 2024. Victims are believed to include a children’s hospital, health care providers, and educational institutions.
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"After a successful Phobos ransomware attack, criminal affiliates paid fees to Phobos administrators for a decryption key to regain access to the encrypted files," said the US Department of Justice.
"Each deployment of Phobos ransomware was assigned a unique alphanumeric string in order to match it to the corresponding decryption key, and each affiliate was directed to pay the decryption key fee to a cryptocurrency wallet unique to that affiliate."
The UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) said the group had had a significant impact on the UK and that, as a result of the investigation, it was able to prevent a number of targeted businesses from falling victim to encryption.
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