MM News

WASHINGTON: The US Justice Department has announced that an international coalition of law enforcement agencies has dismantled a digital marketplace for hacked data that had become popular due to its ease of use.

Th marketplace, commonly known as Genesis, had been responsible for obtaining about 80 million user credentials over the last five years. Working in conjunction with agencies from more than a dozen countries, U.S. law enforcement took control of 11 domain names associated with the marketplace on Tuesday.

Anyone who attempted to access at least one of the sites was met with a notification that the site had been seized by a federal court in Wisconsin’s Eastern District. The notice contained a link to a website that can assist consumers in determining whether their information had been trafficked on the site.

A report published in Washington Post quoted US officials as saying that Genesis provided a range of online services, including real-time updates on hacked data and the necessary information for carrying out ransomware attacks.

In a news release on Wednesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland warned cybercriminals who use or operate illegal marketplaces that the Justice Department, along with its international partners, will track them down and bring them to justice. Genesis is believed to have been based in Russia and to have operated on the dark web, which enables users to remain anonymous.

As of February, the marketplace had listed around 460,000 stolen information packages, including passwords for social media, email accounts, and video streaming services. Sophos, a cybersecurity firm, noted in an August analysis that Genesis provided users with software that continually updated their personal information as it changed on their devices, effectively creating a subscription to the victim’s information.

According to the Justice Department, Genesis Market has provided access to data that was stolen from over 1.5 million computers worldwide and includes more than 80 million account access credentials since it launched in March 2018.

During a news briefing held on Wednesday, senior officials from the FBI and the Justice Department revealed that a global investigation involving law enforcement agencies from at least 15 countries had resulted in 119 arrests. While some arrests were made in the United States, the officials did not disclose the specific numbers and spoke on the condition of anonymity as per the agencies’ ground rules.

The officials also disclosed that the sale of users’ online credentials had generated $8.7 million in cryptocurrency, resulting in overall financial losses estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars.