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INTERPOL on Wednesday announced the dismantling of more than 20,000 malicious IP addresses or domains that have been linked to 69 information-stealing malware variants. The joint action, codenamed Operation Secure , took place between January and April 2025, and involved law enforcement agencies from 26 countries to identify servers, map physical networks, and execute targeted takedowns. "These coordinated efforts resulted in the takedown of 79 percent of identified suspicious IP addresses," INTERPOL said in a statement. "Participating countries reported the seizure of 41 servers and over 100 GB of data, as well as the arrest of 32 suspects linked to illegal cyber activities." Vietnamese authorities arrested 18 suspects, and confiscated devices, SIM cards, business registration documents, and money worth $11,500. Further house raids have led to the arrest of another 12 people in Sri Lanka and two individuals in Nauru. The Hong Kong Police, per INTERPOL, iden...

India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has revealed that it has arrested six individuals and dismantled two illegal call centers that were found to be engaging in a sophisticated transnational tech support scam targeting Japanese citizens. The law enforcement agency said it conducted coordinated searches at 19 locations across Delhi, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh on May 28, 2025, as part of an initiative called Operation Chakra V, which aims to combat cyber-enabled financial crimes. The cybercrime syndicates, per the CBI, defrauded foreign nationals, mainly Japanese citizens, by masquerading as technical support personnel from various multinational corporations, including Microsoft.  "The syndicate operated call centers designed to appear as legitimate customer service centers, through which victims were deceived into believing that their electronic devices were compromised," the agency said . "Under this pretext, victims were coerced into transferring funds ...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Wednesday announced the seizure of cryptocurrency funds and about 145 clearnet and dark web domains associated with an illicit carding marketplace called BidenCash. "The operators of the BidenCash marketplace use the platform to simplify the process of buying and selling stolen credit cards and associated personal information," the DoJ said . "BidenCash administrators charged a fee for every transaction conducted on the website." BidenCash launched in March 2022 to fill the void left by the shutdown of Joker's Stash a year earlier and several other carding forums like UniCC . Since the time it went operational, the illegal bazaar ("bidencash[.]asia," "bidencash[.]bd," and "bidencash[.]ws") is estimated to have supported more than 117,000 customers, facilitated the trafficking of over 15 million payment card numbers and personally identifiable information, and generated no less than $17 mi...

A multinational law enforcement operation has resulted in the takedown of an online cybercrime syndicate that offered services to threat actors to ensure that their malicious software stayed undetected from security software. To that effect, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said it seized four domains and their associated server facilitated the crypting service on May 27, 2025, in partnership with Dutch and Finnish authorities. These include AvCheck[.]net, Cryptor[.]biz, Cryptor[.]live, and Crypt[.]guru, all of which now display a seizure notice. Other countries that participated in the effort include France, Germany, Denmark, Portugal, and Ukraine. "Crypting is the process of using software to make malware difficult for antivirus programs to detect," the DoJ said . "The seized domains offered services to cybercriminals, including counter-antivirus (CAV) tools. When used together, CAV and crypting services allow criminals to obfuscate malware, making it undetecta...

As part of the latest "season" of Operation Endgame , a coalition of law enforcement agencies have taken down about 300 servers worldwide, neutralized 650 domains, and issued arrest warrants against 20 targets. Operation Endgame, first launched in May 2024, is an ongoing law enforcement operation targeting services and infrastructures assisting in or directly providing initial or consolidating access for ransomware. The previous edition focused on dismantling the initial access malware families that have been used to deliver ransomware. The latest iteration, per Europol, targeted new malware variants and successor groups that re-emerged after last year's takedowns such as Bumblebee, Lactrodectus, QakBot, HijackLoader, DanaBot, TrickBot, and WARMCOOKIE . The interaction action was carried out between May 19 and 22, 2025. "In addition, €3.5 million in cryptocurrency was seized during the action week, bringing the total amount seized during the Operation Endgame to...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday announced the disruption of the online infrastructure associated with DanaBot (aka DanaTools) and unsealed charges against 16 individuals for their alleged involvement in the development and deployment of the malware, which it said was controlled by a Russia-based cybercrime organization. The malware, the DoJ said, infected more than 300,000 victim computers around the world, facilitated fraud and ransomware, and caused at least $50 million in damages. Two of the defendants, Aleksandr Stepanov (aka JimmBee), 39, and Artem Aleksandrovich Kalinkin (aka Onix), 34, both from Novosibirsk, Russia, are currently at large. Stepanov has been charged with conspiracy, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, aggravated identity theft, unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information, unauthorized impairment of a protected computer, wiretapping, and use of an intercepted communication. Kalinkin has been charged with cons...

A sprawling operation undertaken by global law enforcement agencies and a consortium of private sector firms has disrupted the online infrastructure associated with a commodity information stealer known as Lumma (aka LummaC or LummaC2), seizing 2,300 domains that acted as the command-and-control (C2) backbone to commandeer infected Windows systems. "Malware like LummaC2 is deployed to steal sensitive information such as user login credentials from millions of victims in order to facilitate a host of crimes, including fraudulent bank transfers and cryptocurrency theft," the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said in a statement. The confiscated infrastructure has been used to target millions across the world through affiliates and other cyber criminals. Lumma Stealer, active since late 2022, is estimated to have been used in at least 1.7 million instances to steal information, such as browser data, autofill information, login credentials, and cryptocurrency seed phrases. Th...

Moldovan law enforcement authorities have arrested a 45-year-old foreign man suspected of involvement in a series of ransomware attacks targeting Dutch companies in 2021. "He is wanted internationally for committing several cybercrimes (ransomware attacks, blackmail, and money laundering) against companies based in the Netherlands," officials said in a statement Monday. In conjunction with the arrest, police seized over €84,000 ($93,000) in cash, an electronic wallet, two laptops, a mobile phone, a tablet, six bank cards, two data storage devices, and six memory cards. The suspect's name was not disclosed. But he is said to have been detained after a search of his residence in Moldova. In at least one instance, the individual conducted a ransomware attack on the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), causing material damage worth approximately €4.5 million. The attack took place in February 2021, resulting in the leak of internal documents after th...

What do a source code editor, a smart billboard, and a web server have in common? They've all become launchpads for attacks—because cybercriminals are rethinking what counts as "infrastructure." Instead of chasing high-value targets directly, threat actors are now quietly taking over the overlooked: outdated software, unpatched IoT devices, and open-source packages. It's not just clever—it's reshaping how intrusion, persistence, and evasion happen at scale. ⚡ Threat of the Week 5Socks Proxy Using IoT, EoL Systems Dismantled in Law Enforcement Operation — A joint law enforcement operation undertaken by Dutch and U.S. authorities dismantled a criminal proxy network, known as anyproxy[.]net and 5socks[.]net, that was powered by thousands of infected Internet of Things (IoT) and end-of-life (EoL) devices, enlisting them into a botnet for providing anonymity to malicious actors. The illicit platform, active since 2004, advertised more than 7,000 online proxies daily, with infected ...

Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (aka Bundeskriminalamt or BKA) has seized the online infrastructure and shutdown linked to the eXch cryptocurrency exchange over allegations of money laundering and operating a criminal trading platform. The operation was carried out on April 30, 2025, authorities said, adding they also confiscated 8 terabytes worth of data and cryptocurrency assets worth €34 million ($38.25 million) in Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, and Dash. According to the BKA, eXch[.]cx, existed since 2014 and offered cryptocurrency swapping services, allowing its users to exchange digital assets. It was available both on the clearnet and the dark web. eXch "specifically advertised on platforms of the criminal underground economy (UE) that it did not implement any anti-money laundering measures," the BKA said in a statement. "Users were neither required to identify themselves to the service, nor was user data stored there. Crypto swapping via eXch was...

A joint law enforcement operation undertaken by Dutch and U.S. authorities has dismantled a criminal proxy network that's powered by thousands of infected Internet of Things (IoT) and end-of-life (EoL) devices, enlisting them into a botnet for providing anonymity to malicious actors. In conjunction with the domain seizure, Russian nationals, Alexey Viktorovich Chertkov, 37, Kirill Vladimirovich Morozov, 41, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Shishkin, 36, and Dmitriy Rubtsov, 38, a Kazakhstani national, have been charged by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) for operating, maintaining, and profiting from the proxy services. The DoJ noted that users paid a monthly subscription fee, ranging from $9.95 to $110 per month, netting the threat actors more than $46 million by selling access to the infected routers. The service is believed to have been available since 2004.

Europol has announced the takedown of distributed denial of service (DDoS)-for-hire services that were used to launch thousands of cyber-attacks across the world. In connection with the operation, Polish authorities have arrested four individuals aged between 19 and 22 and the United States has seized nine domains that are associated with the now-defunct platforms. "The suspects are believed to be behind six separate stresser/booter services that enabled paying customers to flood websites and servers with malicious traffic — knocking them offline for as little as EUR 10," Europol said in a statement. The services, named cfxapi, cfxsecurity, neostress, jetstress, quickdown and zapcut, are said to have been instrumental in launching widespread attacks on schools, government services, businesses, and gaming platforms between 2022 and 2025.  Europol said the platforms offered "slick user interfaces," enabling malicious actors with little to no technical expertis...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday announced charges against a 36-year-old Yemeni national for allegedly deploying the Black Kingdom ransomware against global targets, including businesses, schools, and hospitals in the United States. Rami Khaled Ahmed of Sana'a, Yemen, has been charged with one count of conspiracy, one count of intentional damage to a protected computer, and one count of threatening damage to a protected computer. Ahmed is assessed to be currently living in Yemen. "From March 2021 to June 2023, Ahmed and others infected computer networks of several U.S.-based victims, including a medical billing services company in Encino, a ski resort in Oregon, a school district in Pennsylvania, and a health clinic in Wisconsin," the DoJ said in a statement. Ahmed is accused of developing and deploying the ransomware by exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange Server known as ProxyLogon. The ransomware worked by either encrypting data from ...

Law enforcement authorities have announced that they tracked down the customers of the SmokeLoader malware and detained at least five individuals. "In a coordinated series of actions , customers of the Smokeloader pay-per-install botnet, operated by the actor known as 'Superstar,' faced consequences such as arrests, house searches, arrest warrants or 'knock and talks,'" Europol said in a statement. Superstar is alleged to have run a pay-per-install service that enabled its customers to gain unauthorized access to victim machines, using the loader as a conduit to deploy next-stage payloads of their choice. According to the European law enforcement agency, the access afforded by the botnet was used for various purposes such as keylogging, webcam access, ransomware deployment, and cryptocurrency mining. The latest action, part of an ongoing coordinated exercise called Operation Endgame , which led to the dismantling of online infrastructure associated with...

In one of the largest coordinated law enforcement operations, authorities have dismantled Kidflix, a streaming platform that offered child sexual abuse material (CSAM). "A total of 1.8 million users worldwide logged on to the platform between April 2022 and March 2025," Europol said in a statement. "On March 11, 2025, the server, which contained around 72,000 videos at the time, was seized by German and Dutch authorities." The European law enforcement agency described it as the largest operation undertaken to combat child sexual exploitation. It has been codenamed Operation Stream. The multi-year probe , which commenced in 2022 and involved 38 countries across the world, saw 1,393 identified globally through an analysis of payment transactions, with 79 of them arrested to date for distributing CSAM. Some of the apprehended individuals have also been accused of not only uploading and watching such content but also abused children. In addition, more than 3,000...