Today, January 28, 2021, the National Investigation Service provided details of a large-scale international operation to combat computer crimes in cooperation with the FBI and the US Department of Justice. On the Bulgarian side, the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office of Cassation, the National Investigation Service and the General Directorate for Combating Organized Crime took part in the operation. The Deputy Prosecutor General and the Administrative Head of the National Investigation Service - Borislav Sarafov highlighted the excellent work of the Bulgarian services and the Department of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Bulgaria.
The operation was conducted under the supervision of the Supreme Prosecutor's Office of Cassation. Investigator Svetoslav Vassilev from the National Investigation Service explained that the NetWalker network is a complex form of malware that has been particularly active since last spring. It encrypts the information on the infected computer and blackmails the user into paying a ransom to obtain a decryption key. Many companies, municipalities, hospitals, law enforcement agencies, emergency services, schools, colleges and universities on the teritory of the United States have been affected by NetWalker. Some of the attacks targeted the health sector during the COVID-19 pandemic, with perpetrators taking advantage of the global crisis to blackmail their victims.
A Canadian citizen has been charged in relation to the malware attacks, in which he is believed to have received more than $ 27.6 million through extortion. $ 454,530.19 in cryptocurrency was seized, received from paid ransoms in only three separate extortions. At the time of the detention in the USA of the Canadian citizen, servers through which the criminal activity was carried out were seized in Bulgaria. The head of the International Department at the Supreme Prosecutor's Office of Cassation, Tsvetomir Yosifov, said that the operation was carried out following a request for legal assistance from US law enforcement agencies.