Dec 22, 2020
Law enforcement agencies from the US, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, France, along with Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3), announced today the coordinated takedown of Safe-Inet, a popular virtual private network (VPN) service that was used to facilitate criminal activity. The three domains in question — insorg[.]org, safe-inet[.]com, and safe-inet[.]net — were shut down, and their infrastructure seized as part of a joint investigation called "Operation Nova." Europol called Safe-Inet a cybercriminals' " favorite ." A crucial reason for the domains' seizure has been their central role in facilitating ransomware, carrying out web-skimming, spear-phishing, and account takeover attacks. The service, which comes with support for Russian and English languages and has been active for over a decade, offered " bulletproof hosting services " to website visitors, often at a steep price to the criminal underworld. As of December 1, the