The FBI has stepped up its search for members of a multimillion-dollar cybercrime group more than two years after the bureau and its European allies announced they had taken down the group’s computer systems, according to newly unsealed court documents reviewed by CNN.
A hacking tool associated with the group – whose operations were previously traced to eastern Ukraine – has stalked the internet for nearly a decade, costing victims hundreds of millions of dollars, and leading to a disruptive ransomware attack on a US school in 2017.
After the hacking tool, known as Emotet, reemerged online late last year, the FBI executed a search warrant in January for information that an agent on the case thought might uncover new details about the hackers’ identities or whereabouts. The warrant asked for digital records tied to the hackers that the FBI believed were held by US web-hosting firm GoDaddy.
But the search came up empty, according to court documents unsealed this week in US federal court. Seamus Hughes, an independent researcher and founder of Court Watch, shared the documents with CNN.
The court records show how difficult it can be to shut down cybercriminal gangs, often based in Eastern Europe and Russia, that operate like well-oiled multinational corporations and fleece Americans out of millions of dollars. Unless they’re arrested, the hackers can sometimes recover from law enforcement seizures of their computer infrastructure and rebuild their fraudulent empires.
The records were unsealed in the US District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, where the FBI is investigating Emotet operatives after their malware was used in a ransomware attack on a North Carolina school district in 2017.
A spokesperson for the FBI declined to answer questions about the new court records or the status of the Emotet investigation….
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