An international coalition of police agencies has resurrected the dark website of the notorious LockBit ransomware gang that seized it earlier this year and announced new revelations about the group.
On Sunday, LockBit’s once-official darknet page resurfaced online with new posts suggesting that, at the time of writing, authorities are planning to release new information about the hackers in the next 24 hours.
The posts have titles like “Who is LockBitSupp?”, “What have we learned,” “More LB hackers exposed,” and “What have we done?”
In February, a law enforcement coalition that included Britain’s National Crime Agency, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, and forces from Germany, Finland, France, Japan, and others announced that they had infiltrated LockBit’s official website. The coalition seized the website and replaced the information on it with its own press release and other information, in a clear attempt to troll the hackers and warn that authorities were on to them.
The February operation also included the arrest of two suspected LockBit members in Ukraine and Poland, the shutdown of 34 servers in Europe, the UK and the US, and the seizure of more than 200 cryptocurrency wallets from the hackers.
The NCA and FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
LockBit first emerged in 2019 and has since become one of the most prolific ransomware gangs in the world, raking in millions of dollars in ransom payments. The group has proven to be very resilient. Even after being shut down in February, the group has resurfaced with a new dark web leak site that has been actively updated with new alleged victims.
All but one of the new posts on the seized site have a countdown ending at 9 a.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, May 7, indicating that law enforcement will then announce the new measures against LockBit. Another post states that the site will be shutting down in four days.
Since authorities announced the so-called “Operation Cronos” against LockBit in February, the group’s leader, known as LockBitSupp, claimed in an interview that law enforcement had exaggerated their grip on the criminal organization and the impact of eliminating it.
On Sunday the hacker collective vx-underground wrote on X that they had spoken to LockBit administrative staff, who told them that the police were lying.
“I don’t understand why they’re putting on this little show. “They are obviously upset that we are continuing to work,” the staff said, according to vx-underground.
LockBitSupp’s identity is still unknown, although that could change soon. One of the new posts on the seized LockBit website promises to reveal the hacker’s identity on Tuesday. However, it is important to note that the earlier version of the seized website also appeared to promise to reveal the identity of the gang leader, but ultimately failed to do so.