Cybercrime seems to be ever-present these days, especially during the past few years. But maybe with this police bust, it would lose a little bit of steam.
Mandiant unveiled that a notorious group of cybercriminals called FIN7 has transitioned to ransomware operations.
According to ArsTechnica, a recent police sting conducted by German authorities have finally shut down the cybercrime forum called Hydra. This forum is universally considered to be the biggest of its kind in the world, and perhaps the most profitable one at that-as authorities also managed to seize about $25 million in bitcoin during the sting.
The German Central Office for Combating Cybercrime (locally known as ZIT) and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) announced the seizure of Hydra's servers, alongside a total of 543 bitcoins on the latter's website. In it, they detailed how the sting took place.
According to the BKA, both they and the ZIT have been conducting "extensive investigations" into the cybercrime forum's dealings since August of last year. Their efforts were actually big enough to involve several US authorities, who likely provided extra, much-needed cybersecurity expertise.
Their investigations revealed that the Hydra forum played host to as many as 17 million customer accounts, as well as 19,000 seller accounts. All in all, the illegal marketplace was turning sales amounting to "at least" EU 1.23 billion ($1.33 billion US at the time of this writing) in 2020 alone.
In its entirety, there has been a cumulative $5 billion worth of transactions conducted on Hydra since it began operations in 2015, according to data from blockchain research firm Elliptic.
Furthermore, Elliptic also managed to find out a tiny fraction (4%, to be exact) of the $7 billion worth of Bitcoin stolen from Bitfinex back in 2016 was actually laundered through the Hydra forum. But as to whether the spoils from the most recent Bitfinex hack ($3.6 billion worth of Bitcoin) was also laundered through the forum, it remains unclear.
A visual representation of the digital Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin on December 07, 2017 in London, England. Cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Lightcoin have seen unprecedented growth in 2017, despite remaining extremely volatile. While digital currencies across the board have divided opinion between financial institutions.
Read Also: FBI to Launch a New Unit That Will Focus on Cyber Crimes and Ransomware Profits Cases
Is This A Big Blow To Global Cybercrime Operations?
In several ways, it is. But take it from the myth of the Hydra's name: cut off one head, and two shall take its place.
There's a good possibility that every single account holder on the busted cybercrime forum is now re-organizing and building a new marketplace for themselves, so they can continue their illicit operations. That's one of the worst things about cybercrime, really: it's likely never going away.
hacker
This is proven by recent data which has revealed that cybercrimes, digital scams, and fraud have already reached an all-time high this year. This happened despite more businesses pouring billions into strengthening their cybersecurity efforts-80% of which still fell victim to at least one cyberattack, according to data from Comparitech.
The Hydra forum might have been the biggest of its kind in the world, but it is likely far from the only one. Hacker groups keep popping up all over the place, and they might be running illegal marketplaces of their own where they sell stolen data for big bucks. Safe to say, this specific battle has been won-but the war is not over yet.
Related Article: How COVID Increased Cybercrime and What Companies Can Do to Protect Themselves
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by RJ Pierce
