The FBI and allied agencies including Europol have taken down what they claim were the world’s two largest cybercrime forums, which had a combined 10 million plus users worldwide.
The partners said they had shut down the Cracked marketplace, which peddled “stolen login credentials, hacking tools, and servers for hosting malware and stolen data — as well as other tools for carrying out cybercrime and fraud — since March 2018.”
The site had over four million users and had generated around $4m in revenues, they claimed, and had “impacted” at least 17million victims in the US alone. In a statement, the FBI highlighted how one of the site’s tools had been used to cyberstalk a New York woman, and subject her to “security demeaning and threatening messages”.
Investigators had seized servers and domain names for Cracked, its payment processor Sellix, and a “related bullet proof hosting service.”
Separately, following an investigation by the FBI and its partners, the Justice Department announced, “the seizure of the Nulled website domain and unsealed charges against one of Nulled’s administrators, Lucas Sohn, 29, an Argentinian national residing in Spain.”
Nulled had over five million users who could peruse a similar selection of cybercrime tools. In business since 2016, it allegedly generated around $1m in yearly revenue.
Sohn faces a host of charges. The FBI said in its statement that, “if convicted, Sohn faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison for conspiracy to traffic in passwords, 10 years in prison for access device fraud, and 15 years in prison for identity fraud.”
Europol said that the shutdown operations had seen seven properties searched, with 17 servers and 50 electronic devices seized. Around €300,000 of cash and cryptocurrencies has also been seized.
It added that both sites offered AI-based tools and scripts to automatically scan for security vulnerabilities and optimise attacks. “Advanced phishing techniques are frequently developed and shared on these platforms, sometimes employing AI to create more personalised and convincing messages.”