100 million in reward for tips about the Russian hacker king

Published 9 May 2024 at 11.07

Foreign. Russian Dmitry Khoroshev is singled out as the leader of the ransomware group Lockbit. The United States has now announced a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to his arrest or conviction.

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Now phase two of the international police operation Cronos.

The first phase of the operation ended in February 2024 when an internationally coordinated police effort led to the takeover of Lockbit's primary platform and critical infrastructure.

Now work is underway on phase two where the administrator and developer of Lockbit, a Russian citizen named Dmitry Khoroshev, is now subject to a series of economic sanctions and internationally wanted by the UK, US and Australia.

Operation Cronos is led by British police and supported by Europol and Eurojust. The aim is to seriously damage the capabilities and credibility of the Lockbit group.

In the operation carried out in February this year, thousands of decryption keys were secured to organizations that fell victim to Lockbit worldwide. In this way, the Swedish police have obtained decryption keys for a third of all known Lockbit attacks that hit Swedish businesses.

In a couple of cases, the keys have been able to be used to create decryption programs, but in many cases Swedish organizations have, according to the police had good protection through good and functioning backup solutions.