The FBI has seized a popular cybercrime online forum accused of facilitating large-scale identity theft, according to a bureau notice posted to the site today, and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) may already be swooping on criminals in Australia.
The bureau seized the web domains of Genesis Market, an invitation-only crime forum that sells login information stolen from hundreds of thousands of computers, pursuant to a US court order.
The FBI dubbed the takedown as “Operation Cookie Monster,” a play on the forum’s sale of web browser information known as “cookies”, per the seizure notice.
Active for about five years, Genesis Market has played a key role in giving cybercriminals access to hacked computers for carrying out other forms of fraud such as identity theft and ransomware attacks.
The seizure appears to be part of a broader law enforcement operation aimed at Genesis Market, according to the FBI notice, which bears the logos of the AFP and numerous European law enforcement agencies.
An AFP spokesperson told 9news.com.au “the AFP and partners are conducting operational activity today as part of an ongoing global cybercrime operation”.
It said more information about the action would be provided at an appropriate time.
The crime forum, which has advertised login details for personal bank accounts, grew out of research that hackers did on anti-fraud technologies used by hundreds of banks and payment systems, according to cybersecurity researchers.
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Genesis Market also sells “digital fingerprints” – the set of data collected from computers that identifies individual users online.
Advertisements on Genesis Market have claimed that as long as someone has access to a hacked computer, the computer’s fingerprints will be kept up to date, according to researchers at cybersecurity firm Sophos.
“In other words, Genesis customers aren’t making a one-time buy of stolen information of unknown vintage; they’re paying for a de facto subscription to the victim’s information, even if that information changes,” Sophos said in an analysis of Genesis Market last year.
The FBI’s seizure is the latest in a series of international law enforcement stings that increasingly involve coordinated arrests and raids on multiple continents.
The FBI and Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, in January 2022 seized computer servers after identifying “more than 100 businesses” that were at risk of being hacked by cybercriminals.
The law enforcement operation against Genesis Market comes on the heels of the FBI’s raid of another popular criminal forum, BreachForums, that had touted data stolen in a hack affecting members of Congress and thousands of other people.
The FBI arrested a 20-year-old New York man accused of being the founder of BreachForums.
While arrests take some alleged cybercriminals offline, the acute demand for stolen personal data means that other alleged hackers often quickly spring up to take their place.
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