French Authorities Arrest Russian National Allegedly Connected to Hive Ransomware

Suspected Hive collaborator arrested

The French police recently announced the arrest of a Russian national in Paris suspected of having ties with the Hive ransomware gang.

The 40-year-old suspect allegedly helped the notorious cybercrime organization by laundering the ransom payments of the group’s victims.

“New arrest in the #Hive #ransomware affair: after the international search in January to dismantle this network of hackers constituting a serious threat, the #Judicial Police arrested in Paris an individual suspected of having laundered money resulting from these cyber attacks,” the French National Police said in a post on X. “€570,000 in cryptocurrencies seized. Individual arrested.”

€570,000 worth of crypto seized

The French Anti-Cybercrime Office (OFAC) arrested the suspect after monitoring his social media activity, which helped link him to digital wallets that received millions of US dollars from dubious sources.

Authorities also seized €570,000 worth of crypto assets during the Dec 5 apprehension of the suspect residing in Cyprus.

During the operation, a cooperation between Europol, Eurojust and Cyprus authorities, police agents searched a seaside resort where the suspect lived and found a trove of incriminating evidence.

The rise and fall of Hive

Hive gained notoriety as a ransomware-as-a-service (Raas) provider. The malicious operation emerged in June 2019 and was active for more than two years, during which it engaged in a plethora of ill-natured activities, including compromising stolen credentials, phishing attacks, and exploiting vulnerabilities.

In January, the FBI disrupted the activity of Hive after infiltrating its infrastructure and surveilling its operation for half a year. The process led to the seizure of several sites owned by the cybercrime group.

Carrying on the Hive legacy

However, after Hive’s downfall, a new RaaS service, dubbed Hunters International, arose from the ashes; the new malicious operation reportedly uses code that closely matches a significant chunk of Hive ransomware’s code.

Although security experts believe the new group is mostly Hive operating under a different brand, the Hunters International collective denies the allegations, claiming that it just purchased the encryptor source code from the defunct group’s developers.

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