European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation

And we end this episode by looking at the cybercrime news.

Law enforcement agencies across 10 countries, led by German authorities and supported by Europol and Eurojust, have disrupted the KillSec ransomware network under Operation KillSwitch.

The operation has taken control of the group's dark web leak site, five central servers, and secured at least 110 terabytes of stolen data.

Active since 2024 and linked to approximately 1,000 attacks worldwide, about 500 of which have been verified as successful, KillSec exploited system vulnerabilities and AI tools to exfiltrate sensitive organizational data and extort ransom payments under threat of public release.

Yeah, why not? Yeah, yeah.

So because if you don't give him a job, then this leads nicely into our next story, because a 16-year-old is suspected of being the main operator of KillSec, a ransomware group that Eurojust says is responsible for almost 1,000 attacks worldwide, okay? So this 16-year-old did good, got $5,000.

This 16-year-old had done almost 100 attacks worldwide, probably has a million-plus in Bitcoin somewhere, and it's like, okay, this is all different.

Yeah.

So yeah, um, according to Eurojust, KillSec has been active since 2024, and the group got into organization systems by exploiting poorly secured access, um, mainly on l- cloud storage.

So the KillSec group stole data and copied it to their own infrastructure, then they threatened to make the stolen data public unless victims paid a ransom.

Mm.

None of the allegations have been proven yet in court.

Police and prosecutors in Hamburg led the operation with help from Spanish police, Europol, Eurojust, and the FBI's San Juan office.

Puerto Rico wants the UK suspect extradited.

Police seized KillSec's leak site and secured at least 110 terabytes of stolen data.

In our last story, the police dismantled the KillSec ransomware game, allegedly led by a 16-year-old.

Operation Killswitch, an international law enforcement action on September 30th involving Belgium, Finland, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, and the United States with Interpol, Eurojust, Bitdefender, and Group IB.

That's a lot of people, folks.

seized the Kill Switch ransomware gang's infrastructure and took its dark web leak site offline with a seizure banner.

All of that is all happening.

But as I mentioned earlier, the system is now increasingly decentralized, so it's a lot harder to attack a system that is decentralized when you have independent exercises of justice happening, and these actors are increasingly interlinked through platforms like Eurojust, et cetera.

Um, and you have a civil society sector that is increasingly sophisticated about doing and, and supporting these prosecutions, putting dossiers together, collecting information.

The open source revolution, I think, has just begun.

... who, who, um, were also from Estonia, as far as I can recall.

And Imre Arakas, it, there was a kind of a meeting with Euro- betw- w- like, Eurojust or Europol facilitated it, between the Estonians, the Lithuanians, and other countries, Spain, obviously, where-

Yeah

...

So I will, uh, um, stop with the operational part because legislation is good, but then you have also the whole operational part with law enforcement judicial cooperation.

Uh, I w- I'm here, uh, we ha- we met now, as I said, uh, law enforcement authorities from the different member states in the context of, uh, operational cooperation, which ha- is happening in the context of impact with the support of Europol, EU agencies, Europol, Eurojust, Frontex, European Labor Authority also, and this leads to very, very concrete results.

Um, uh, I must say also Europol is of course also there to support bilateral cooperation or trilateral cooperation.

But sometimes they have big operations like Global Chain, which, uh, which is quite recent and which, which, uh, led, uh, I will not now give the numbers, uh, for Ireland, which are also impressive.