Two alleged members of DD4BC, an organized cyber criminal group, have been arrested in Europe.

Operation Pleiades, which resulted in the capture of suspect cyber criminals, was carried out by Europol and joint police forces of Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the UK and Germany, with the support of other countries’ law enforcement services, says Europol in the statement published on 12 January. The target of the police actions was the criminal group called DD4BC (Distributed Denial of Service – DDoS - for Bitcoin).

DD4BC used to blackmail businesses, demanding ransom in bitcoins threating them with DDoS attacks. The group first started to harass bitcoin exchanges, then shifted to online casinos, banks and trading platforms in Europe, the US, Australia, Asia and New Zealand, says the detailed report by Arbor Networks, published in April 2015. If the target company refused to pay the ransom, DD4BC would typically embark on a more serious attack, although sometimes the group didn’t proceed with any action. In one case the confusion caused by a DD4BC attack gave another criminal (or criminals) the opportunity to steal a sum in bitcoins from the victim, notes the report. 

It is particularly difficult to trace such criminal groups due to unwillingness of the victims to report, to avoid reputational damage. 

“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,” said Wil van Gemert, Europol’s Deputy Director.

Andrew Levich