The FBI seized domains of popular cybercrime marketplaces after receiving court warrants. We hope this will be a serious blow to the site’s administrators.
This action was a result of the federal government’s “Operation Cookie Monster”. This is a reference to cookies sold in large numbers on the Genesis Market over the last five years and other data required to log into third-party machines.
As such, the site played a key role in the cybercrime supply chain, allowing threat actors to access victims’ networks to conduct information theft, ransomware attacks, fraud, and more.
The FBI also noted that international law enforcement and private sector cooperation is supporting the operation, citing contributions from the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), Europol and other agencies. I was.
A total of 200 searches and nearly 100 preventive actions were carried out worldwide, resulting in 120 arrests, including 24 in the UK.
For more on the crime market, US and European police dominate the cybercrime market.
There seemed to be hundreds of thousands of listings on the Genesis Market at any one time.
Julia O’Toole, CEO of MyCena Security Solutions, said the seizure was a “big win” for law enforcement.
“Site operators collect data about internet users, including login credentials, auto-filled passwords and browser cookies, to bypass MFA and access online accounts,” she explained. .
“When the attacker gained access to these, there was no warning that the account had been compromised because the attacker had just logged in, so the victim only became aware of the fraud after it happened.” .”
The operators of this site monetized their collection of victims’ account IDs by selling them via a bot service at prices that depended on the assets in question and the duration of access.
The FBI continues to seek information about the site’s administrators. In that case, it’s reasonable to assume that the site will somehow come back to life, or that customers will move to competing marketplaces.
The news comes just weeks after BreachForums was shut down following the arrest of its administrators.
