Police take down two large cybercrime forums, arrest suspects

Avatar

An international operation has shut down two of the world’s largest cybercrime forums — Cracked and Nulled — which had more than 10 million users and earned over $1 million in criminal profits, Europol said in a statement on Thursday.

Cybercriminals used the sites to trade illegal goods and services, such as stolen data, malware and hacking tools. The forums also offered scripts to automatically scan victims’ systems for security vulnerabilities, making cyberattacks more effective, Europol said.

Notices posted on the seized websites included the logos of multiple law enforcement agencies, including the FBI as well as police in Spain and Germany.

Nulled and Cracked had been operating since 2015 and 2018, respectively, each with around five million registered user accounts. Police said they were closely linked — both administratively and technically.

Other services associated with the forums were also taken down, including Sellix, a financial processor used by Cracked, and StarkRDP, a hosting service promoted on both platforms and run by the same suspects.

During the operation, which took place earlier this week, police arrested two suspects — a man and a woman — in Valencia, according to Spanish police.  Law enforcement also confiscated over $300,000 in cash, dozens of electronic devices, and cryptocurrency assets during searches of their properties.

The investigation, ongoing since March, has identified eight people allegedly directly involved in operating the platforms, including two German citizens aged 29 and 32, according to the German police.

Cracked also said on Telegram that police had seized its domain. “A sad day indeed for our community,” the channel’s operators said.

CybercrimeNewsNews Briefs
Get more insights with the

Recorded Future

Intelligence Cloud.

Learn more.

No previous article

No new articles

Daryna Antoniuk

is a reporter for Recorded Future News based in Ukraine. She writes about cybersecurity startups, cyberattacks in Eastern Europe and the state of the cyberwar between Ukraine and Russia. She previously was a tech reporter for Forbes Ukraine. Her work has also been published at Sifted, The Kyiv Independent and The Kyiv Post.

 

Total
0
Shares
Previous Post

Authorities Seize Domains of Popular Hacking Forums in Major Cybercrime Crackdown

Next Post

Google: Over 57 Nation-State Threat Groups Using AI for Cyber Operations

Related Posts

HubPhish Exploits HubSpot Tools to Target 20,000 European Users for Credential Theft

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a new phishing campaign that has targeted European companies with an aim to harvest account credentials and take control of the victims' Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure. The campaign has been codenamed HubPhish by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 owing to the abuse of HubSpot tools in the attack chain. Targets include at least 20,000 automotive, chemical,
Avatar
Read More