FBI zaps darknet marketplace selling Social Security data

The FBI, Division of Justice (DoJ), and Inner Income Service (IRS) have labored collectively to close down the SSNDOB Market, a group of darknet websites that listed the non-public data of round 24 million U.S. residents, and which generated greater than $19 million in gross sales income.

For the uninitiated, the darknet, also referred to as the darkish net, is an encrypted a part of the web world that isn’t listed by engines like google and may solely be accessed utilizing specialised browsers. Whereas the darknet is well-liked with cybercriminals promoting unlawful services on-line, others equivalent to political activists or whistleblowers may additionally use the community to share extremely delicate data.

The DoJ stated this week that the SSNDOB Market, which had been working for quite a lot of years, bought private data equivalent to names, dates of beginning, and Social Safety numbers belonging to people within the U.S.

Efforts to dismantle the service concerned working with legislation enforcement in Cyprus and Latvia, and earlier this week seizure orders had been enacted towards the domains utilized by the SSNDOB Market, resulting in its shutdown.

The SSNDOB Market gave the impression to be an effectively run enterprise operated by directors who positioned advertisements on darknet felony boards for the SSNDOB’s providers whereas additionally providing buyer help, the DoJ stated.

It added that the directors “employed numerous methods to guard their anonymity and to thwart detection of their actions, together with utilizing on-line monikers that had been distinct from their true identities, strategically sustaining servers in numerous nations, and requiring consumers to make use of digital fee strategies, equivalent to bitcoin.”

Commenting on the case, Particular Agent in Cost Darrell Waldon of the IRS-CI Washington, D.C. Subject Workplace, stated: “Identification theft can have a devastating impression on a sufferer’s long-term emotional and monetary well being. Taking down the SSNDOB web site disrupted ID theft criminals and helped tens of millions of Individuals whose private data was compromised.”

Waldon added that the U.S. and worldwide legislation enforcement group will proceed to work to finish what he known as “these advanced scams.”

With apparently no arrests made in reference to the case, the perpetrators behind SSNDOB stay free to arrange a brand new operation, whereas different cybercriminals may additionally are available in to attempt to fill the opening left by the shutdown. In that sense, it’s a recreation of whack-a-mole for the FBI, although its efforts will stall and disrupt the perpetrators whereas additionally sending out a message that it’s on their case.

In one other latest win for investigators focusing on nefarious on-line outfits, the “largest darkish net market on the planet” was knocked offline in April. The platform, Hydra Market, made its cash by way of gross sales of medicine and money-laundering providers.