The self-created risk in Broadcom's big VMware kiss-off.It's bad enough to suffer the humiliation of being publicly owned, and far worse to get a troll pie in the face at the same time. It makes even more sense in the highly competitive and reputation-driven world of ransomware gangs. So it makes sense that when this largest and most professional criminal gang was taken down, the temptation to stick a cherry on top was irresistible. Best of all, the countdown timer by which LockBit displayed how long victims had left to pay up had been duplicated, only this time counting down to the unmasking of LockBit's head honcho, LockBitSupp. Embedded images of proof of compromise had jokey file names. The original site had a loading animation of the logos of the high-profile victims this was replaced by one of the flags of the agency consortium that had just administered the kicking. Alongside the "this site has been seized by law enforcement" stuff, the agencies had spent some effort in crafting what can only be described as a slab of swaggering trolling. And so it came to pass, with 30-plus servers taken out, source code, decryption keys, affiliate details, chat logs and other good things obtained, and the users getting the traditional "Game over" message when they tried to connect. Operation Cronos, led by the UK's National Crime Agency and the US's FBI, was put together by agencies from ten countries with the aim of closing down the world's most successful ransomware gang, LockBit. It's rare enough in real life, far less so in the grim meat grinder of cybersecurity, yet sometimes it happens. A twist of humor adds to the drama and keeps us hooked. Opinion The best cop shows excel at mind games: who's tricking whom, who really wins, and what price they pay.
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