A key suspect behind the VenomRAT malware was arrested in Greece on November 3, as part of Europol’s major “Operation Endgame,” conducted in collaboration with the Greek police. The most recent phase of the operation took place between November 10-14 under coordination from Europol headquarters in The Hague, targeting Rhadamanthys, one of the largest information-stealing software programs, the Remote Access Trojan VenomRAT, and the Elysium botnet, which played crucial roles in international cybercrime.
Europol: Dismantled network responsible for attacks against hundreds of thousands of victims worldwide
Specifically, according to a relevant Europol announcement, the dismantled network was responsible for malware attacks against hundreds of thousands of victims worldwide.
Operation Endgame, conducted under the coordination of Europol and Eurojust, represents a joint effort between law enforcement and judicial authorities from Greece, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States to combat malware distributors.
Hundreds of thousands of infected computers
These coordinated actions resulted in:
- One arrest in Greece (on November 3).
- Searches at 11 locations (one in Greece, one in Germany, and 9 in the Netherlands).
- The disruption or termination of operations of more than 1,025 servers worldwide.
- The seizure of 20 online domains.
- The malware network dismantled by the operation consisted of hundreds of thousands of infected computers containing several million pieces of stolen data. Many victims were unaware that their system had been targeted.
The main suspect, who is from Albania, behind the information theft network had access to more than 100,000 crypto wallets belonging to these victims, with a value potentially reaching millions of euros.
