The US State Department recently announced a reward of up to $15 million for information that could lead to the identification of the leaders of the LockBit ransomware group.
In its statement, the US State Department said that since January 2020, LockBit has carried out more than 2,000 attacks against victims in the US and around the world, causing disruption and expense through the destruction or theft of sensitive information. More than $144 million in ransom has been paid to recover data from these incidents.
The announcement follows the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) hacking and obtaining LockBit's source code and intelligence related to its operations through Operation Cronos.
Ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) services like LockBit often extort businesses by stealing sensitive data and encrypting it, making it a lucrative business model for Russian cybercrime groups operating with impunity because they are outside the jurisdiction of Western law enforcement.
US State Department offers reward for information on LockBit group leader
The main development team tends to expand its network of affiliates to carry out attacks using LockBit's infrastructure and malware. Affiliates will purchase access to targets of interest using brokers (IABs).
LockBit is the first ransomware group to announce a bug bounty program in 2022 with up to $1 million in rewards for finding security flaws in their website and locking software.
The attack on LockBit followed an investigation that began in April 2022, during which law enforcement dismantled three branches in Poland and Ukraine, seizing 34 servers and 1,000 decryption keys.
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