Online Cybercrime Marketplaces Disrupted In Joint Global Operation

The U.S. Justice Department announced that the infrastructure of the online cybercrime marketplaces known as Cracked and Nulled has been disrupted and taken down in a multinational operation involving the United States, Romania, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Greece.

The operation was announced in conjunction with Operation Talent, a multinational law enforcement operation supported by Europol to investigate Cracked and Nulled.

According to seizure warrants unsealed Friday, the Cracked marketplace has been selling stolen login credentials, hacking tools, and servers for hosting malware and stolen data as well as other tools for carrying out cybercrime and fraud since March 2018.

Cracked had more than four million users, listed more than 28 million posts advertising cybercrime tools and stolen information, and generated approximately $4 million in revenue. It is estimated that at least 17 million victims from the United States have been impacted by its cyber operations.

One product advertised on Cracked offered access to billions of leaked websites allowing users to search for stolen login credentials, according to the Department of Justice.

All the servers and domain names of Cracked; its payment processor, Sellix; and a related bulletproof hosting service have been seized.

The Justice Department announced the seizure of the Nulled website domain and unsealed charges against one of Nulled’s administrators, Lucas Sohn, a young Argentinian living in Spain. According to the unsealed complaint affidavit, the Nulled marketplace has been selling stolen login credentials, stolen identification documents, hacking tools, as well as other tools for carrying out cybercrime and fraud, since 2016. It had more than five million users, listed more than 43 million posts advertising cybercrime tools and stolen information, and generated approximately $1 million in yearly revenue, according to the Justice Department. One product advertised on Nulled purported to contain the names and social security numbers of 500,000 American citizens.

The FBI, working in coordination with foreign law enforcement partners, seized the servers and domain that hosted the Nulled marketplace infrastructure.

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