The Republic of Srpska

In December 2015, police officers of Crime Police Administration, in cooperation with several police agencies from all over the world, in coordination with and monitored by the District Prosecutor’s Office in Banja Luka, performed the operation whose code name is ‘Pleiades’ dealing with the criminal activities in the field of cybercrime, in particular, the criminal offence ‘Extortion’, according to Article 242, paragraphs 1 and 2, related to the criminal offence ‘Preventing and Limiting Access to Public Computer Network, Article 292đ of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Srpska. For the purposes of coordinating the operation, on the premises of Crime Police Administration, the Operational center was formed where, in addition to members of the Republic of Srpska Ministry of the Interior, there were also members of police agencies from Great Britain, Germany, Austria, EUROPOL and the USA. The task of the Operational center was to exchange information and coordination with international partners. The operation ‘Pleiades’ was performed based on suspicion that the international criminal group ‘DD4BC’ was attacking information and communication infrastructure of both private and public sector. After performing the preliminary attacks whose duration was limited, the suspects used to send their extortion request for payment of certain amount of virtual money – bitcoin with the aim of acquiring illegal material gain. If the damaged persons would not pay the requested amount of bitcoins, they would be exposed to attacks whose consequences were more severe and lasted for longer period. The primary targets of extortion were from the sector for online gambling industry, but then the suspects spread their activities to other sectors as well, such as finances and entertainment. Also, this criminal group was developing a software for using vulnerability in ‘BrainWallet’, a digital wallet for bitcoins, with the aim of transferring the funds that existed in it. In the Republic of Srpska, the activities which came as a result of the operation were searches of several locations and arrests of two persons who are the members of this criminal group. One person remained in custody for 30 days, and the other person was allowed to defend himself while at liberty. During the searches, certain amount of communication and computer equipment was seized. The person who was detained in custody is suspected of performing DDOS attacks in the Republic of Srpska in 2014 and 2015 on websites of the local media such as ‘buka.com’, ‘istinito.com’, ‘e-novine.com’, ‘federalna.ba’, ‘fena.co.ba’, etc., media websi