There's a notorious hacker group called Hive.

They are considered to be extremely mercenary.

Their words used to describe them and I probably can't say in a Wall Street Journal podcast,

but you know, like they're just bad, bad people.

That's our colleague Bob McMillan who covers hacking.

Hive makes ransomware that holds businesses hostage.

Other hackers break into a company's computer systems that can use Hive's ransomware to

encrypt all the data and force companies to pay millions of dollars to get it back.

But recently, Hive got a taste of its own medicine.

This time it was their servers that got hacked.

And last week, when hackers tried to get onto Hive's website, they couldn't.

It was locked up.

All they saw was a message that read,

the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized this site as part of a coordinated law enforcement

action.

I think it probably felt very similar to the way it felt for victims of ransomware.

So instead of this humming, little corporate ransomware business, everything went dark

for them.

So the tables had turned, right?

Welcome to the journal, our show about money, business, and power.

I'm Ryan Knutson.

It's Wednesday, February 1st.

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