Five Arrested for Cerber, CTB-Locker Ransomware Spread

Authorities arrest three Romanian suspects for spreading CTB-Locker malware and two for a ransomware case linked to the United States.

Dark Reading Staff, Dark Reading

December 20, 2017

1 Min Read
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Romanian authorities have arrested three suspects for spreading a form of ransomware called Curve-Tor-Bitcoin Locker (CTB-Locker) throughout Europe. Two members of the same criminal group have been arrested for distributing Cerber ransomware within the United States.

An investigation into CTB-Locker began in early 2017, when authorities were alerted to Romanian nationals sending spam messages designed to look like they came from Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK. The messages infected systems and encrypted data with CTB-Locker ransomware, which targets almost all versions of Windows including XP, Vista, 7, and 8.

Two suspects were arrested for contaminating a large number of systems in the US with Cerber ransomware. Initially the two investigations were separate, but they were combined when it was discovered people in the same Romanian criminal group was responsible for both. Suspects did not develop the malware themselves but acquired it before launching infection campaigns.

Read more details here.

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Dark Reading Staff

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