UK honors cyber sleuth who helped takedown LockBit ransomware cartel

A seasoned cyber investigator with the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), lauded for his help to dismantle the notorious LockBit ransomware gang in 2024, is one of eight receiving the King’s New Year Honours.

“Gavin has been awarded for his 'tenacity and leadership' on Operation Cronos, the international effort to dismantle the largest ransomware group in the world,” the NCA announced in a post on X earlier this week.

“LockBit was responsible for a quarter of all global ransomware attacks between 2023 and 2024, and victims lost billions of pounds before specialist NCA officers seized control of LockBit's own systems and stopped further attacks,” the NCA said.

The 51-year old Webb was the UK lead in the February 2024 Operation Cronos – an international operation involving Europol, the FBI, and about a dozen other EU nations, disrupting the core infrastructure of the ransomware group "at every level."

Webb and the specialist NCA officers he commanded were able to infiltrate and seize control of LockBit’s systems as part of the takedown, eventually leading to multiple arrests that year, including the October 2024 arrest of four LockBit members – an alleged LockBit developer, two LockBit affiliate supporters, and the administrator of a Bulletproof hosting service used by the ransomware group.

The bust prevented the group from carrying out further attacks and subsequently ruined their reputation in the criminal underworld, the NCA states.

The NCA also credited Webb for implementing a “well-publicised and innovative” strategy which used LockBit’s own dark web site to notify the gang’s affiliates it had been taken over by authorities.

The strategy was also used to publicly out the group’s leader, “LockBitSupp,” as Russian national Dmitry Khoroshev, who, the NCA says, “had been so confident in his anonymity that he offered a $10m reward to anyone who could reveal his identity.”

Khoroshev, still at large and believed to be still living in Russia, was subsequently sanctioned by the UK, US, and Australia.

In June that year, the FBI also revealed it had recovered 7,000 decryption keys for several LockBit ransomware families, helping thousands of victims recover stolen data via the ‘No More Ransom’ website.

“These honours are well-deserved by the officers who have truly gone above and beyond to support victims and protect the public from the most serious and harmful crime,” the agency said.

A total of eight NCA officers were recognised as part of the New Year's Honours List, including NCA Director of Legal Services Kay Taylor and Fiona Nicolson, a former team member with the National Economic Crime Centre.

The names of the five other NCA recipients, including one legal expert who supported the prosecution of hundreds of dangerous criminals, were not released due to the “sensitive nature of their work.”

Unlock more exclusive Cybernews content on YouTube.