Europol | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A coordinated international law enforcement exercise has taken down the online infrastructure associated with a cross-platform remote access trojan (RAT) known as NetWire . Coinciding with the seizure of the sales website www.worldwiredlabs[.]com, a Croatian national who is suspected to be the website's administrator has been arrested. While the suspect's name was not released, investigative journalist Brian Krebs  identified  Mario Zanko as the owner of the domain. "NetWire is a licensed commodity RAT offered in underground forums to non-technical users to carry out their own criminal activities," Europol's European Cybercrime Center (EC3)  said  in a tweet. Advertised  since   at least 2012 , the malware is typically distributed via  malspam campaigns  and gives a remote attacker complete control over a Windows, macOS, or Linux system. It also comes with password-stealing and keylogging capabilities. The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ)...

Law enforcement authorities from Germany and Ukraine have targeted suspected core members of a cybercrime group that has been behind large-scale attacks using DoppelPaymer ransomware. The operation, which took place on February 28, 2023, was carried out with support from the Dutch National Police (Politie) and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), according to Europol. This encompassed a raid of a German national's house as well as searches in the Ukrainian cities of Kiev and Kharkiv. A Ukrainian national was also interrogated. Both individuals are believed to have taken up crucial positions in the DoppelPaymer group. "Forensic analysis of the seized equipment is still ongoing to determine the exact role of the suspects and their links to other accomplices," the agency further  said . In a related development, German authorities issued arrest warrants against three alleged DoppelPaymer operatives – lgor Olegovich Turashev , Igor Garshin (aka Igor Garschin...

Identity-based attacks are on the rise. Attackers are targeting identities with compromised credentials, hijacked authentication methods, and misused privileges. While many threat detection solutions focus on cloud, endpoint, and network threats, they overlook the unique risks posed by SaaS identity ecosystems. This blind spot is wreaking havoc on heavily SaaS-reliant organizations big and small. The question is, what can security teams do about it? Have no fear, because Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) is here to save the day. It's essential to have the visibility and response mechanisms to stop attacks before they become breaches. Here's the super lineup that every team needs to stop SaaS identity threats. #1 Full coverage: cover every angle  Like Cap's shield, this defense should cover every angle. Traditional threat detection tools such as XDRs and EDRs fail to cover SaaS applications and leave organizations vulnerable. SaaS identity threat detection and re...

A coordinated law enforcement effort has dismantled an online phone number spoofing service called  iSpoof  and arrested 142 individuals linked to the operation. The websites, ispoof[.]me and ispoof[.]cc, allowed the crooks to "impersonate trusted corporations or contacts to access sensitive information from victims," Europol  said  in a press statement. Worldwide losses exceeded €115 million ($ 119.8 million), with over 200,000 potential victims believed to have been directly targeted through iSpoof in the U.K. alone, the Metropolitan Police  noted .  Among the 142 people arrested is the administrator of the website, who was apprehended in the U.K. on November 6, 2022. The website and its server were subsequently seized and taken offline two days later by Ukrainian and U.S. agencies. Per the National Police Corps, the helpdesk fraud  allowed  registered subscribers on the online portal to mask their phone numbers and make calls impersonatin...

Europol on Tuesday announced the dismantling of an organized crime group that dabbled in phishing, fraud, scams, and money laundering activities. The cross-border operation, which involved law enforcement authorities from Belgium and the Netherlands, saw the arrests of nine individuals in the Dutch nation. The suspects are men between the ages of 25 and 36 from Amsterdam, Almere, Rotterdam, and Spijkenisse and a 25-year-old woman from Deventer, according to a  statement  from the National Police Force. Also confiscated as part of 24 house searches were firearms, ammunition, jewelry, designer clothing, expensive watches, electronic devices, tens of thousands of euros in cash, and cryptocurrency, the officials said. "The criminal group contacted victims by email, text message and through mobile messaging applications," the agency  noted . "These messages were sent by the members of the gang and contained a phishing link leading to a bogus banking website." Unsu...

10 of the most prolific mobile banking trojans have set their eyes on 639 financial applications that are available on the Google Play Store and have been cumulatively downloaded over 1.01 billion times. Some of the most targeted apps include Walmart-backed PhonePe, Binance, Cash App, Garanti BBVA Mobile, La Banque Postale, Ma Banque, Caf - Mon Compte, Postepay, and BBVA México. These apps alone account for more than 260 million downloads from the official app marketplace. Of the 639 apps tracked, 121 are based in the U.S., followed by the U.K. (55), Italy (43), Turkey (34), Australia (33), France (31), Spain (29), and Portugal (27). " TeaBot  is targeting 410 of the 639 applications tracked," mobile security company Zimperium  said  in a new analysis of Android threats during the first half of 2022. " Octo  targets 324 of the 639 applications tracked and is the only one targeting popular, non-financial applications for credential theft." Aside from  TeaBo...

An international law enforcement operation raided and took down RaidForums, one of the world's largest hacking forums notorious for selling access to hacked personal information belonging to users. Dubbed Tourniquet, the seizure of the cybercrime website involved authorities from the U.S., U.K., Sweden, Portugal, and Romania, with the criminal investigation resulting in the  arrest  of the forum's administrator at his home last month in Croydon, England. The three confiscated domains associated with the illicit marketplace include "raidforums[.]com," "Rf[.]ws," and "Raid[.]lol." Diogo Santos Coelho (aka "Omnipotent"), the said founder and chief administrator, was apprehended in the U.K. on January 31 and is pending extradition to the U.S. Santos Coelho has been charged with conspiracy, access device fraud, and aggravated identity theft. In addition to detailing Santos Coelho's central role in designing and administering the soft...

VPNLab.net, a  VPN provider  that was used by malicious actors to deploy ransomware and facilitate other cybercrimes, was taken offline following a coordinated law enforcement operation. Europol said it took action against the misuse of the VPN service by grounding 15 of its servers on January 17 and rendering it inoperable as part of a disruptive action that took place across Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Latvia, Ukraine, the U.S., and the U.K. A second outcome of the seizure is that at least 100 businesses that have been identified as at risk of impending cyber attacks are being notified. Europol didn't disclose the names of the companies. Established in 2008, the tool provided an advanced level of anonymity by offering double VPN connections to its clients — wherein the internet traffic is routed through two VPN servers located in different countries instead of one — for as cheap as $60 a year. "This made VPNLab.net a popular ...

The European Union's data protection watchdog on Monday ordered Europol to delete a vast trove of personal data it obtained pertaining to individuals with no proven links to criminal activity. "Datasets older than six months that have not undergone this Data Subject Categorisation must be erased," the European Data Protection Supervisor ( EDPS )  said  in a press statement. "This means that Europol will no longer be permitted to retain data about people who have not been linked to a crime or a criminal activity for long periods with no set deadline." EDPS' investigation into Europol's handling of sensitive data commenced in April 2019, with the authority noting that the storage of large volumes of data with no Data Subject Categorisation poses a risk to individuals' fundamental rights and amounts to mass surveillance. The cache is said to contain at least four petabytes,  according  to The Guardian. In addition, the ruling also imposed a six-mon...

Law enforcement agencies in Italy and Spain have dismantled an organized crime group linked to the Italian Mafia that was involved in online fraud, money laundering, drug trafficking, and property crime, netting the gang about €10 million ($11.7 million) in illegal proceeds in just a year. "The suspects defrauded hundreds of victims through phishing attacks and other types of online fraud such as SIM swapping and business email compromise before laundering the money through a wide network of money mules and shell companies," Europol  said  in a statement published today.  The group operated out of Tenerife, located in Spain's Canary Islands. The development comes following a year-long sting operation that saw as many as 16 house searches in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Turin, and Isernia, resulting in 106 arrests — mostly in Spain and Italy — and seizure of electronic devices, 224 credit cards, SIM cards, point-of-sale terminals, a marijuana plantation, and equipment used...

Europol on Tuesday said it shut down DarkMarket, the world's largest online marketplace for illicit goods, as part of an  international operation  involving Germany, Australia, Denmark, Moldova, Ukraine, the U.K.'s National Crime Agency (NCA), and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). At the time of closure, DarkMarket is believed to have had 500,000 users and more than 2,400 vendors, with over 320,000 transactions resulting in the transfer of more than 4,650 bitcoin and 12,800 monero — a sum total of €140 million ($170 million). The illegal internet market specialized in the sales of drugs, counterfeit money, stolen or forged credit card information, anonymous SIM cards, and off-the-shelf malware. In addition, the months-long intelligence operation also resulted in the arrest of a 34-year-old Australian national near the German-Danish border over the weekend, who is alleged to be the mastermind behind DarkMarket. According to  The Guardian , DarkMarket ca...

In a coordinated global law enforcement operation, Europol has taken down more than 30,500 websites for distributing counterfeit and pirated items over the Internet and arrested three suspects. Among other things, the seized domains reportedly offered various counterfeit goods and pirated products and services, including pirated movies, illegal television streaming, music, electronics, cracked software downloads, counterfeit pharmaceuticals, and other illicit products. However, it should be noted that the seized web domains do not include any major pirate websites on the Internet. During the investigation, international law enforcement officials: shut down a total of 30,506 web domains, arrested three suspects, seized 26,000 luxury clothes and perfumes, seized 363 liters of alcoholic beverages, and seized an unspecified number of hardware devices. The officials also identified and froze more than €150,000 from several bank accounts and online payment platforms. Th...

In a coordinated International law enforcement operation, Europol today announced to shut down the global organized cybercrime network behind Imminent Monitor RAT , yet another hacking tool that allows cybercriminals to gain complete control over a victim's computer remotely. The operation targeted both buyers and sellers of the IM-RAT (Imminent Monitor Remote Access Trojan), which was sold to more than 14,500 buyers and used against tens of thousands of victims across 124 countries. The infrastructure and front-end sale website of the Imminent Monitor have also been seized as part of this operation, making the Trojan unusable for those who already bought it, as well as unavailable for the new users. Promoted as a legitimate remote administration framework, the hacking tool was widely used to unauthorisedly access targeted users' computers and steal their login credentials for online banking and other financial accounts. According to Europol's press release , aut...

In a joint effort by several law enforcement agencies from 6 different countries, officials have dismantled a major global organized cybercrime network behind GozNym banking malware . GozNym banking malware is responsible for stealing nearly $100 million from over 41,000 victims across the globe, primarily in the United States and Europe, for years. GozNym was created by combining two known powerful Trojans—Gozi ISFB malware, a banking Trojan that first appeared in 2012 and Nymaim, a Trojan downloader that can also function as ransomware. In a press conference held on Thursday, Europol said the operation was successfully conducted with the cooperation between Bulgaria, Germany, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, and the United States. The United States has charged ten members of the GozNym criminal network, 5 of which were arrested during several coordinated searches conducted in Bulgaria, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. However, rest of the five defendants reside in Rus...

Europol announced the shut down of two prolific dark web marketplaces— Wall Street Market and Silkkitie (also known as Valhalla)—in simultaneous global operations against underground websites for trading drugs, stolen credit card numbers, malicious software, and other illegal goods. Police in western Germany has also arrested three men who were allegedly running Wall Street Market, the world's second largest dark marketplace with more than a million users and 5,400 vendors. Besides this, the operation involving Europol , Dutch police and the FBI also led to the arrests of two major suppliers of narcotics via the Wall Street Market site in Los Angeles, the United States. According to the Europol, the police officers seized the computers used to run the illegal market place, along with more than €550 000 (£472,000 or $621,000) in cash, more than €1 Million in Bitcoin and Monero cryptocurrencies, expensive cars, and other evidence. In a press release published today, Eu...

In an international operation involving law enforcement authorities from the U.S. and several European countries, feds have shut down an online underground marketplace and arrested three suspects in Ukraine. Dubbed xDedic, the illegal online marketplace let cybercriminals buy, sell or rent out access to thousands of hacked computers and servers across the world and personally identifiable information of U.S. residents. The underground website had been around for years with its administrators strategically maintaining and concealing the locations of its servers all over the world to facilitate the operation of the underground site. xDedic offered buyers to search for over 176,000 unique compromised servers—which were usually in the form of credentials for compromised Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) accounts—from around the world by price, operating system, or even their geographic location from where it was stolen. xDedic impacted victims in multiple industries, "including...

In a major hit against international cybercriminals, the Dutch police have taken down the world's biggest DDoS-for-hire service that helped cyber criminals launch over 4 million attacks and arrested its administrators. An operation led by the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) and the Dutch Police, dubbed " Power Off, " with the support of Europol and a dozen other law enforcement agencies, resulted in the arrest of 6 members of the group behind the " webstresser.org " website in Scotland, Croatia, Canada and Serbia on Tuesday. With over 136,000 registered users, Webstresser website lets its customers rent the service for about £10 to launch Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against their targets with little or no technical knowledge. "With webstresser.org, any registered user could pay a nominal fee using online payment systems or cryptocurrencies to rent out the use of stressers and booters," Europol said. The service was also...

Spanish Police has arrested the alleged leader of an organised Russian cybercrime gang behind the Carbanak and Cobalt malware attacks, which stole over a billion euros from banks worldwide since 2013. In a coordinated operation with law enforcement agencies across the globe, including the FBI and Europol, Police detained the suspected leader of Carbanak hacking group in Alicante, Spain. Carbanak hacking group started its activities almost five years ago by launching a series of malware attack campaigns such as Anunak and Carbanak to compromise banks and ATM networks, from which they swiped millions of credit card details from US-based retailers. According to the Europol, the group later developed a sophisticated heist-ready banking malware known as Cobalt, based on the Cobalt Strike penetration testing software, which was in use until 2016. "The magnitude of the losses is significant: the Cobalt malware alone allowed criminals to steal up to EUR 10 million per heist,...

In a coordinated International cyber operation, law enforcement agencies have seized over 20,520 website domains for illegally selling counterfeit products, including luxury products, sportswear, electronics, pharmaceuticals and online piracy on e-commerce platforms and social networks. Counterfeiting is a form of trademark infringement that involves the manufacturing and/or distribution of fake lookalike branded products with a primary purpose to confuse or dupe consumers into buying them. The operation, dubbed " In Our Sites (Project TransAtlantic VIII) ," was conducted by Europol in association with the Interpol, the US National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Centre (NIPRCC), FBI, Department of Justice (DOJ), and law enforcement authorities from 27 European Member States. Counterfeit goods are a huge business, as the International Trademark Association suggested that around $460 billion worth of counterfeit goods were bought and sold last year alone. ...

Law enforcement authorities from Europe and Russia have arrested five members of an international cyber criminal gang for stealing $3.2 million cash from ATMs using malware. Three of the suspects, Andrejs Peregudovs (41), of Latvia, Niklae Penkov (34) of Moldova, and Mihail Colibaba (30) of Romania, were arrested in Taiwan by the Taiwanese Criminal Investigation Bureau last summer, have already been sentenced to 5 years in prison for their role in a massive ATM heist operation, involving 22 individuals from 6 countries. The European-based cyber criminal gang used a variety of different hacking techniques to infect ATMs with malware and force them to dispense cash. According to Europol that began its investigation in early 2016, the gang used spear-phishing emails containing malicious attachments to target bank employees and penetrate the bank's internal networks. From there, the cyber crooks then located and hacked into the network of ATMs from the inside, and used a m...

Europol has announced that the law enforcement agencies from 13 countries around the globe have arrested 34 users of Netspoof DDoS attack tool and interviewed and warned 101 suspects in a global crackdown. According to the report published on the official website of Europol, law enforcement authorities worldwide have made the arrest between 5 December and 9 December 2016. Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) supported the law enforcement agencies in their efforts to identify suspects in the European Union and beyond. Arrested Suspects Are Mainly Teenagers All those arrested are mainly "young adults under the age of 20," who are suspected of paying for Netspoof stresser as well as booters services to maliciously deploy DDoS-for-hire software and using them to launch cyber attacks. The ddos attacks flooded target websites and web servers with massive amounts of data, leaving those services inaccessible to users. Europol's European Cybercrime Cent...