A coordinated effort by multiple international partners has resulted in a sting to disrupt the practices of online marketplaces Cracked and Nulled.
Cracked and Nulled are responsible for selling and distributing stolen login credentials, identification documents, and cybercrime tools. The tools have resulted in seventeen million Americans being the target of concentrated cyberattacks that lead back to these sites.
The United States, Romania, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Greece all participated in the crackdown alongside Operation Talent. Europol has led the operation to investigate Cracked and Nulled for some time, focusing on their suspicious and illicit trading platforms.
Cracked and Nulled marketplaces targeted
The The FBI Buffalo Field Office is investigating the Cracked portion of the cyber attacks that targeted United States citizens. Senior Counsel Thomas Dougherty of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) and Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Kruly for the Western District of New York are prosecuting the case.
The website reported four million users, twenty-eight million cybercrime listings, and stolen data worth $4 million. The FBI and the company’s payment processor, Sellix, have seized all of the servers linked to Cracked.
According to the court report, the FBI Austin Cyber Task Force is investigating the Nulled portion of this cybercrime case. They have laid charges at the door of an Argentinian national, Lucas Sohn, 29, who reportedly acted as an administrator to the Nulled platform.
If found guilty, Sohn faces severe custodial sentences. These include five years in prison for conspiracy to traffic in passwords, ten years for access device fraud, and fifteen years for identity fraud.
Nulled, according to the Justice Department, “had over five million users, listed over 43 million posts advertising cybercrime tools and stolen information, and generated approximately $1 million in yearly revenue.”
One notable product that Nulled had up for auction on the site contained the names and social security numbers of 500,000 American citizens.
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