Security researchers from Bitdefender are working with the Romanian National Police to examine some servers used by cybercriminals to distribute the ransomware impersonating the Police (ICEPOL Ransomware). These servers are located in Bucharest, and were seized by authorities last year.
The servers in Romania were just one part of a malicious distribution system consisting of dozens of such servers. The servers in Romania communicated with servers of the same circuit in the Netherlands before they were shut down.
Bitdefender , 2013. During this period, the logs showed over 267,000 successful infections, most of which were in the US (42,400), Germany (31,700) and Italy (24,800). Greece, proportionally to its population, was hit hard by this particular infection. 3,677 infections is not a few.
It is worth noting that when the Romanian authorities shut down the servers, the command and control unit found refuge in Germany.
“The results of the ICEPOL Ransomware came from the cooperation of various law enforcement agencies and third-party vendors,” said the head of the Romanian Police’s Cybercrime Service.
“Although complex, we have had very good results so far and will continue to prosecute cybercrime, even if the lack of jurisdiction sometimes slows things down.”
As for the criminals' profit, logs from the seized computers showed that they managed to collect over $158,000.
