[BreachExchange] Europol dismantled the Rex Mundi hacker crew, it arrested another member of the gang

[Audrey McNeil]

https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/73584/cyber-crime/
rex-mundi-dismantled.html

Another success of the Europol made the headlines, the European police
announced that several French nationals were arrested in the past year on
suspicion of being involved with notorious hacker group known as Rex Mundi
(“King of the World”).

The Rex Mundi crime group has been active since at least 2012. it hacked
into the systems of several organizations worldwide and attempted to
blackmail them.

The list of the victims is long and includes AmeriCash Advance, Webassur,
Drake International, Buy Way, Hoststar, Websolutions.it, Numericable,
Habeas, AlfaNet, Domino’s Pizza, and the Swiss bank Banque Cantonale de
Geneve (BCGE).

The hackers used to steal sensitive information from the victims, then they
demanded fees for not disclosing the stolen data.

The operation coordinated by the Europol was launched in May 2017 after the
group targeted a UK-based company. Crooks stole significant amounts of
customer data from the company, then attempted to blackmail it by demanding
the payment of a bitcoin ransom of nearly €580,000 ($670,000) for not
disclosing the incident. The group also requested more than €825,000
($776,000) for details on the hack.

The hackers also asked the victim additional €210,000 ($240,000) for each
day the payment was delayed.

“A 25-year-old coder was arrested on 18 May by the Royal Thai Police based
on a French international arrest warrant. The arrest of this young
cybercriminal was the eight in an international operation supported by
Europol and the Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce (J-CAT)  that started
exactly one year ago.” reads the announcement published by the Europol.

“In May 2017 a British-based company was the victim of a cyber-attack
during which a large amount of customer data was compromised. The attack
was immediately claimed by an organisation called Rex Mundi.”

After the victim reported the incident to the authorities, the UK’s
Metropolitan Police, the French National Police and Europol launched a
joint operation that lead to the identification of a French national.

“Within an hour, Europol’s 24/7 Operational Centre was able to link the
available information to a French national,” continues the Europol.

In June 2017, the authorities identified and arrested five suspects, two
were arrested in October 2017 and one on May 18, 2018.

All of the suspects are French nationals and they were all arrested by
French police, except for the last arrest, which took place in Thailand.

The last member of the crew is a 25-year-old developer that was arrested
last month by the Royal Thai Police.

The leader of the Rex Mundi group admitted blackmailing the company but
claimed to have hired hackers on the Dark Web to hack the victims.
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