Just days after President Biden called President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and demanded that he act to shut down ransomware groups that are attacking American targets, the biggest of them has gone off-line. The mystery is who made that happen.
The group, called REvil, short for “Ransomware evil,” is believed responsible for the attack that brought down one of America’s largest beef producers, JBS, and it took credit for a hack that affected thousands of businesses around the world over the July 4 holiday. On Friday, describing his ultimatum to the Russian president, Mr. Biden said “we expect them to act,” and when asked later if he would take down the group’s servers if Mr. Putin did not, the president simply said, “Yes.”
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