Germany has arrested a Russian national suspected of being a leading member of the Qilin ransomware group following extradition from Japan earlier this month.
Japan has confirmed the extradition to Germany, with the National Police Agency saying that the suspect was detained after arriving in the country as a tourist.
“When a Russian national for whom Germany had obtained an arrest warrant in connection with a ransomware incident in Germany arrived in Japan, the Japanese Ministry of Justice, the Tokyo High Public Prosecutors Office, and Germany worked together to detain the suspect under the Extradition Law for Fugitives by obtaining a provisional detention warrant, and then facilitated the extradition,” [machine translated] reads the press release.
Earlier this week, Japanese media reported the arrest based on internal sources, but authorities in the country have now officially confirmed the action.
Qilin is a notorious ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation that emerged in August 2022 under the name Agenda, and deployed typical double-extortion attacks, where data is stolen before being encrypted.