Spanish police arrest 16-year-old suspected of running encryption ransomware KillSec

Odaily Planet Daily News Spanish police arrested a 16-year-old Romanian boy in Alicante, suspecting him to be the administrator and main operator of the KillSec ransomware organization. Europol said law enforcement agencies had taken control of the organization's servers and leak sites and had secured at least 110 terabytes of stolen data.

The operation involved eight home searches in Spain, Greece, Romania and the United Kingdom, investigating approximately 1,000 suspected attacks worldwide, of which approximately 500 were confirmed successful. Two other suspects in their 20s were arrested in the UK and Romania, and a British-based Dutch man was charged and arrested in Puerto Rico and is awaiting extradition.

KillSec has been active since around 2024, often demanding ransom in cryptocurrency and performing double extortion by encrypting servers and threatening to expose data. Investigators are tracing the group's proceeds, including in cryptocurrency; Europol's European Cybercrime Center provided cryptocurrency tracing and digital forensics support. (Decrypt)