Europol Arrests Key Suspects of Bitcoin Extortionist Group DD4BC

In a major breakthrough in the DD4BC case, the European Union’s top law enforcement agency, Europol, announced on Tuesday that one individual had been arrested and another detained as part of an effort called Operation Pleiades. 

Last month, law enforcement agencies from Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany and the U.K. joined forces with Europol in the framework of an operation against the cybercriminal group.

Europol said that key members of the organised network were identified in Bosnia and Herzegovina by the UK Metropolitan Police Cyber Crime Unit (MPCCU). Police authorities from Australia, France, Japan, Romania, the USA, Switzerland and INTERPOL supported the coordinated activities.

"Operation Pleiades resulted in the arrest of a main target and one more suspect detained. Multiple property searches were carried out and an extensive amount of evidence was seized”, Europol said in a statement.

DD4BC is a nefarious group of cybercriminals that threatened bitcoin exchanges, gaming sites and financial institutions with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in order to extort bitcoins.

“These groups employ aggressive measures to silence the victims with the threat of public exposure and reputation damage. Without enhanced reporting mechanisms law enforcement is missing vital means to protect companies and users from recurring cyber-attacks”, said Wil van Gemert, Europol’s Deputy Director Operations. “Police actions such as Operation Pleiades highlight the importance of incident reporting and information sharing between law enforcement agencies and the targets of DDoS and extortion attacks.”