Ragnar Locker, a high-profile hacking group who stole vital information from Japanese publisher Capcom, have been arrested. This was a group effort that took various international police forces, but they eventually got the hackers and, hopefully, justice is served.
Europol released a press release, confirming that Ragnar Locker had been caught, and it was far from easy. A combination of law forces had to search various countries including Czechia, Spain, and Latvia, before finding the key target in Paris.
As we said earlier, this was an international group effort, as the police from Czechia, Germany, Italy, Japan, Latvia, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, and the United States of America were all involved. Aside from Capcom, other victims of Ragnar Locker include a Portuguese national carrier and a hospital in Israel.
Edvardas Šileris, The Head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, released the following statement:
“This investigation shows that once again international cooperation is the key to taking ransomware groups down. Prevention and security are improving, however ransomware operators continue to innovate and find new victims. Europol will play its role in supporting EU Member States as they target these groups, and each case is helping us improve our modes of investigation and our understanding of these groups. I hope this round of arrests sends a strong message to ransomware operators who think they can continue their attacks without consequence.”
Back in November 2020, Ragnar Locker stole 1tb worth of information from Capcom, exposing the information of thousands of the company’s employees. Names, emails, passports, and so much more were revealed, putting all of these people in danger, due to how sinister the internet can be.
Of course, this isn't the only time a high-profile gaming company had its data breached. The 2011 PlayStation Network outage is probably the most infamous gaming hacking story, preventing anyone from going online for a month. EA also had its data breached back in 2021.
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At the time, Capcom blamed the pandemic for hitting the company’s vulnerabilities, which resulted in the ransomware attack. Due to employees getting sick, an old VPN was later hacked which led to all this information being stolen.
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