Europol announced this Wednesday the dismantling of one of the world’s largest networks of ‘hackers’ selling stolen data, in a police operation involving 17 countries.
The target was “Genesis Market, one of the most dangerous markets in the world,” European police said in a statement.
The operation, which took place on Tuesday, consisted of simultaneous actions against users of the platform and resulted in 119 arrests and 208 search warrants.
The investigation has been running since 2019 with the cooperation of the European Cyber Crime Center and the Joint Working Group on Cyber Crime, both based at Europol.
The dismantling was led by the FBI and the Dutch National Police, who met at Europol’s headquarters to coordinate the various actions to be taken in 17 countries, a group to which Portugal was not a part.
The now dismantled criminal group was considered one of the biggest drivers of cybercrime through the sale of credentials, digital identities and stolen accounts worldwide.
Created by the group, the “bots,” mechanisms that infect electronic devices through computer viruses to collect data, can later be bought by other criminals, giving them access to fingerprints, data from auto-fill forms, and credentials collected in real time .
The Genesis Market became a popular resource among ‘hackers’ because it was accessible on the open internet via guest status.
Source: DN
