A bootleg on-line market referred to as SSNDOB was taken down in operation led by U.S. regulation enforcement businesses, the Division of Justice (DoJ) introduced Tuesday.
SSNDOB trafficked in private data corresponding to names, dates of beginning, bank card numbers, and Social Safety numbers of about 24 million people within the U.S., producing its operators $19 million in gross sales income.
The motion noticed the seizure of a number of domains related to {the marketplace} — ssndob.ws, ssndob.vip, ssndob.membership, and blackjob.biz — in cooperation with authorities from Cyprus and Latvia.
In line with blockchain analytics agency Chainalysis, SSNDOB’s Bitcoin cost processing system has obtained almost $22 million value of Bitcoin throughout over 100,000 transactions since April 2015.
Moreover, bitcoin transfers to the tune of greater than $100,000 have been unearthed between SSNDOB and Joker’s Stash, one other darknet market that specialised in stolen bank card data and voluntarily closed store in January 2021, indicating an in depth relationship between the 2 felony storefronts.
“The SSNDOB directors created commercials on darkish net felony boards for the Market’s companies, offered buyer help features, and commonly monitored the actions of the websites, together with monitoring when purchasers deposited cash into their accounts,” the DoJ stated in a press release.
Moreover, the cybercriminal actors are stated to have employed ways to hide their true identities, together with utilizing nameless on-line profiles, sustaining servers in numerous international locations, and requiring potential patrons to make use of cryptocurrencies.
“Identification theft can have a devastating impression on a sufferer’s long-term emotional and monetary well being,” stated Darrell Waldon, particular agent in control of IRS-CI Washington, D.C. Discipline Workplace. “Taking down the SSNDOB web site disrupted ID theft criminals and helped thousands and thousands of Individuals whose private data was compromised.”
The takedown marks the continued ramping up of efforts on the a part of regulation enforcement businesses internationally to disrupt malicious cyber exercise.
Final week, Europol publicized the shut down of the FluBot Android banking trojan, whereas the Justice Division stated it seized three domains utilized by cybercriminals to commerce stolen private data and facilitate distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assaults for rent.
Earlier this 12 months, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) additionally neutralized a modular botnet dubbed Cyclops Blink in addition to dismantled RaidForums, a hacking discussion board infamous for promoting entry to hacked private data belonging to customers.
In a associated growth, the U.S. Treasury Division additionally sanctioned Hydra after German regulation enforcement authorities disrupted the world’s largest and longest-running darkish net market in April 2022.
