Global police agencies have confiscated over $6.5m both in cash and virtual currencies, 64 firearms, and 1,100 pounds of drugs - arresting 179 vendors across 6 countries including the U.S and Europe in one of the biggest raid on dark web marketplaces. The international sting operation saw considerable co-operation from Law enforcement agencies all over the world including the US, UK, Germany, Europe, Canada, Europe, Sweden, Austria, and the Netherlands.

The 500kg of drugs recovered by investigators during the operation included fentanyl, methamphetamine, oxycodone, ecstasy, cocaine, hydrocodone, MDMA, and several other medicines containing addictive substances, as per the findings.

The authorities dubbed the global sting operation as 'DisrupTor' and while announcing it, they claimed in a press release that the "golden age of the dark web marketplace is over." The roots of the operation go back to May 3, 2019; the day German authorities seized the dark web drug market, "Wallstreet market" and arrested its operators.

"Operations such as these highlight the capability of law enforcement to counter encryption and anonymity of dark web market places. Police no longer only take down such illegal marketplaces – they also chase down the criminals buying and selling illegal goods through such sites." The press release further read.

According to the Justice Department, it was the largest international law enforcement operation that targeted opioid traffickers on the dark web. The investigation witnessed an extensive range of investigators ranging from the FBI, ICE, DEA, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), to the Defense Department.

Commenting on the success of the operation, the head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3), Edvardas Šileris said, “Law enforcement is most effective when working together, and today’s announcement sends a strong message to criminals selling or buying illicit goods on the dark web: the hidden internet is no longer hidden, and your anonymous activity is not anonymous. Law enforcement is committed to tracking down criminals, no matter where they operate – be it on the streets or behind a computer screen.”

“With the spike in opioid-related overdose deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic, we recognize that today’s announcement is important and timely,” said Christopher Wray, FBI director. “The FBI wants to assure the American public, and the world, that we are committed to identifying dark net drug dealers and bringing them to justice.” He further added.

On June 22, a message appeared on the Darknet about the sale of a database of clients of the largest Russian banks. The seller did not specify how many records he has on hand but assured that he is ready to upload 5 thousand lines of information per week.

One of the Russian Newspapers had a screenshot of a test fragment of the Alfa-Bank database, which contains 64 lines. Each of them has the full name, city of residence, mobile phone number of the citizen, as well as the account balance and document renewal date.

A newspaper managed to reach up to six clients using these numbers. Two of them confirmed that they have an account with Alfa-Bank and confirmed the relevance of the balance.

Alfa-Bank confirmed that they know about the data leak of several dozen clients.
The seller of Alfa-Bank's database said that he also has confidential information of clients of other credit organizations.

"I can sell a database of VTB clients with a balance of 500 thousand rubles or more with an update from July 17 for 100 rubles per entry," claimed the seller. However, the Russian newspaper was not able to get test fragments of these databases.

The newspaper also contacted two other sellers who offered information about users of Gazprombank, VTB, Pochta Bank, Promsvyazbank, and Home Credit Bank.
Information about the account balance is classified as a Bank secret. Knowing such confidential details makes it easier for attackers to steal money using social engineering techniques.

"There are two ways to get bases on the black market. One of them is the leak of data by an insider from a Bank or company. The second option is through remote banking vulnerabilities," said Ashot Hovhannisyan, founder of the DLBI leak intelligence service.
According to him, the reason for the ongoing leaks is inefficient investments in security. Companies often protect their systems from hacking from outside, but not from insiders.

Researchers at IntSight have discovered that IM platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, IRC, and Jabber are being used by cybercriminals for advertising and putting their goods and services on sale. One of the major reason as to why cybercriminals are switching to these IM platforms from the conventional ones is 'law enforcement practices'; law enforcement operations have been targeting online darknet markets one after another. Earlier in 2017, the world's largest dark web market, AlphaBay was taken offline, sending darknet users into chaos. Immediately after, the cyberspace witnesses the shut down of Hansa, another major darknet market. As more and more major dark web markets went offline due to the law enforcement penetrations, cybercriminals are wisely migrating to new platforms.

Although threat actors are loving IM platforms, the regular cybercrime sources such as dark web markets, credit card shops, and forums are still witnessing their web usual traffic. These platforms have more advantages such as chatbots, fewer rules, and automated replies due to their core nature, unlike IM platforms that are majorly meant for communication.

While giving insights, Etay Maor, IntSights CSO, said, "Telegram appears to be experiencing the most growth, with more than 56,800 Telegram invite links shared across cybercrime forums and over 223,000 general mentions of the application across forums. Telegram is also the platform most often discussed in foreign language forums."

"Financial threat actors and fraudsters exchange stolen carding information, selling or trading all kinds of credit card dumps, and publishing methods or techniques relevant for the fraud community. In addition, there is also a trade of physical items stolen or counterfeited from organizations in the retail industry.” He added.

“While the data itself is fully encrypted and law enforcement needs sophisticated algorithms in order to decrypt it, some countries have authorized law enforcement agencies to access the private information of their citizens if sanctioned by courts or other judicial authorities – including information that lives in IM platforms. Threat actors are worried about the cooperation between technology companies and law enforcement agencies, especially in the United States.” Maor further explained.

Personal data of 40 million users registered on Wishbone has been published online by hackers, it included user details like usernames, contact numbers, email addresses, Facebook and Twitter access tokens, DOBs, location, gender, and MD5 hashed passwords. Researchers have confirmed the authenticity of the data that has found to be accurate – belonging to the users who have used the app. It could be used by attackers to carry out various malicious activities such as phishing campaigns, identify thefts, credential stuffing attacks, and account takeovers.

Wishbone is a mobile survey app that provides users a social platform to compare social content, the app hasn't disclosed its total user count in recent times, Wishbone has been enlisted as one of top 50 most popular social networking apps in iOS App Store for years now, also making it to the top 10 in its prime.

This breach came as the second-largest security incident in the last three years for the app, earlier in 2017, hackers breached around 2.2 million email addresses and 287,000 phone numbers. It mainly contained kids' personal details. However, the recent breach mainly consists of numbers belonging to young women.

According to the reports, the database was circulating secretly since March, it has been put up for sale on dark web forums for thousands of dollars. Later, 'ShinyHunters', a dark web trader who allegedly leaked the data, stated that they will be publishing the data for free after individuals began reselling it.

While commenting on the matter, senior vice president of data security specialists comforte AG, Mark Bower said, “It looks like security and privacy have been an afterthought, not a matter of culture and software development process. If the passwords are hashed with MD5, then the users affected should be immediately making sure their ID’s and passwords aren’t used elsewhere with the same password. MD5 is a goner as far as security is concerned but used by mistaken developers unfamiliar with its security risks or using older code libraries using MD5. Hashed MD5 passwords aren’t difficult to brute force. The bigger issue here is the personal data though – so now attackers have a bunch more data for social engineering.”

Security experts have recommended Wishbone users to update or change their passwords and stay wary of any suspicious activity in their account.

Atlas VPN did a new study based on Flash Intelligence Research findings from 2017-2019. The research has revealed the costs of essential goods and services on the dark web. For instance, the Social Security Numbers, which are now out of date and insecure as they are no longer in use, especially after the 2018 Equifax Hack, they are still widely used as a primary proof of identification confirmation. Hackers tend to attack websites that can generate millions of SSNs at once so that all the data is vulnerable to hackers.


Therefore, with millions of SSNs in the open, they are sold up to $4 on the dark web. According to Flashpoint, the following services are available on the dark web along with the SSNs.

These services are divided into four types:

•  Hacker Services
•  Forged Documents 
• Personal Identifiable Information (PII) 
• Stolen Financial Information 

The PII (personally identifiable information) package, in addition to the SSN for $4, has the victim's Name, Passport No, Driver's License Details, and email id. However, access to Stolen Financial Information costs much more than SSN. According to Atlas VPN, credit cards up to $5k balance costs $10, whereas discredited bank accounts with savings more than $10000 cost $25.

Note: The price also depends on the victim's savings. If the savings go higher, the cost to obtain the details also goes higher. It is because of victims with high credit score accounts are less risky to attack as their banks won't notice it and won't cut it off.

Forged documents top the list in the prices. Physical passports are sold for $3k-$5k on the dark web. According to other reports, a 1-hour DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service allows the servers to shut down or stop working )attack on any bank or government website costs around $165.

How to prevent yourself? 

It is a bit difficult to prevent such attacks, but the users can always follow some rules to secure their account information. These are:

•  Secure your devices with a password; a pin would be better.
•  Avoid using public wifis while browsing or downloading apps. 
• Use 2 step verification

Are you fond of buying stolen'/leaked data? Because, one such domain, named ‘WeLeakInfo.com’ recently got seized by the US authorities.

WeLeakInfo, with its absolutely convenient name, had been selling stolen data from other hacked websites, online for the past three years.

The website provided an online service where hacked data was made available to people willing to pay for it.

Per sources, hackers were made available people’s “cleartext passwords” which aided them to purchase a subscription on the site in order to attain access to tons of user credentials.

Apparently, this illegal website was doing so well that it had gotten quite a popular fan-base for itself in the hacking “underworld”.

Reportedly, people were even providing them with consignments to execute recon on targeted individuals and organizations alike.

The modus operandi was in the way, that hackers would buy access to the site. They’d then search for names, emails and usernames of people they want to hack. The site would come up with results in the affirmative as to in which data breaches exactly were the required user’s data available.

The hackers would then have complete access to people’s passwords which they could easily run against that person’s other online profiles as well.

The cost of the website was incredibly low making it easily accessible to all sorts of hackers of all sorts of abilities and financial attributes.

Reportedly, for a lowly amount of $2/day hackers could fully wring the website for unlimited searches for any user’s data which was ever in a data breach.

During the silence before the storm period, WeLeakInfo was proudly flaunting on its website its expanded network of over 12 billion user records owing it to more than 10,000 data breaches, reports mentioned.

The storm hit and WeLeakInfo got taken down together by FBI, authorities from the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, the UK, and Germany.
Also, per sources, two arrests were made in the Netherlands and Northern Ireland each. Reportedly, the arrested suspects are allegedly staff members of the site.

After the US authorities took down “LeakedSource” in February 2017, “WeLeakInfo happens to be the second most major website to go down the same drain.

There still exist several websites that are providing people access to stolen data especially cleartext password, as you read this.

Per sources, similar websites, allegedly by the name of “Detached”, “Leak-Lookup” and “Sunbase” have been created on the model of a website “Have I Been Pwned” which is a website created by Australian researchers, per reports.

The model of the three websites and “Have I Been Pwned” may be the same but the latter never permits access to cleartext passwords.

Want to know something interesting and alarming? A research report published last year revealed that most ATM's can be hacked in less than 20 minutes. And extensive research showed that 85% of ATMs allowed attackers access to the network and 58% had vulnerabilities in their programmes that could be used to control the machine from far of location.



This research concludes the extreme fragility of ATM machines and can be a huge threat as they not only hold huge amounts of cash but also user data and if the data entered by user like pin, phone number or card could be traced then it poses a grave security issue.

CloudSek, after this report scrounged the dark web to find the various ATM hacking strategies and counjoured up a list to make people more aware and stay safe from cyber crimes.

Method 1: ATM Malware Card

This is the most popular method out there. It includes an entire malware kit containing ATM Malware Card, PIN Descriptor, Trigger Card and an Instruction Guide.
Once the Malware Card is installed, all the user information is captured in the machine and then hackers using Trigger Card can dispense all the cash from the ATM.
The kit comes with step by step procedure clearly explained and Windows XP supportable.

Method 2: USB ATM Malware

This is also windows XP supported. It allows hackers to dispense cash from ATM via Malware-hosted USB .

Method 3 : ATM Hacking Appliances

According to CloudSek, "There are a number of ATM Skimmer Shops on the dark web that offer various ATM Hacking Appliances such as EMV Skimmer, GSM Receiver, ATM Skimmer, POS, Gas Pump, Deep Insert, etc. Many shops offer a package of these different devices together."
"These shops are available on the dark web and keep getting updated with newer devices including Terminals, Upgraded Antenna, custom-made ATM Skimmers, RFID Reader/Writer, and so on."

Method 4 : Prepaid Cards

Some sites on the dark web offer cards like Bank Fulls and physical cards that can be used for online transactions and as debit cards in ATM respectively.

Method 5: Tutorials and Case Studies

There are a range of tutorials and case studies on the dark web as to how to hack ATMs . To site one, there is a forum that gives detailed account on how to access these machines using Botnets.

Method 6: Ploutus-D 
This was used in a recent ATM hack, where it gained control of the machine, the cash dispenser, card reader, and pin pad. The source code of Ploutus-D is now being sold on the dark web.

In Conclusion

It's not easy to comprehend that a machine so extensively used in daily life could be so easy to hack and could be siphoning your money to hackers but ATM attacks are becoming quite common, a hard pill to swallow but it's the reality. 

Hundreds, around 338 people have been arrested in the worldwide sting of "largest dark web child porn marketplaces", investigators said.

The now seized English website, "Welcome to Video" hosted 2,00,000 videos showing illegal acts committed to children, which were downloaded more than a million times. The site had eight terabytes of data containing gruesome acts being done to infants, toddlers and children.

The site's owner Jong Woo Son, 23, from Korea is currently in prison, serving a sentence of 18 months. Unites States officials have unsealed nine allegations against him.

"You may try to hide behind technology but, we will find you and arrest you and prosecute you." Jessie Liu, the US attorney for the District of Columbia said in a press conference.

The site was shut down a year ago in March by US authorities, but on Wednesday officials said 338 users have been arrested from 38 countries including UK, Ireland, US, South Korea, Germany, Spain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Czech Republic and Canada.
The site also used a Bitcoin based marketplace with at least 7,300 transaction worth about 730,000 dollars. UK's National Crime Agency said "The site was one of the first to offer sickening videos for sale using the cryptocurrency bitcoin. "

The arrest was  result of a three years of hunt by National Crime Agency of Britain, and task forces from UK, US, South Korea and Germany. The officials first came across the website while investigating one of UK's worst child sex offender and paedophile, geophysicist Dr Matthew Falder in 2017. Fadler, admitted to 137 offenses and is serving a 25 years sentence for sharing images and abusive videos on the dark web. Then in March, 2018 officials went to South Korea to take down the website's server and to arrest Jong Woo Son, the owner of the site.

The officials were able to arrest many suspects by tracing the cryptocurrency transactions. Seven men from the UK and five from America have already been convicted of the investigation. One of them being, Kyle Fox another child offender already in jail for raping a five-year-old boy and sexually abused a three-year-old girl.
“The scale of this crime is eye-popping and sickening,” said John Fort, the chief of IRS criminal investigations. The task force was able to rescue 23 children from a state of constant abuse.

Firms including MG Motors, Shell India and Daimler India commercial vehicles got in jeopardy as the servers of SGS Group got compromised.

The private data saved on those servers was up for sale for a mere amount of $10,000 on ‘Dark Web’ or on the private internet forums.

Per sources, the data includes quality reports of the few very prominent oil and gas firms and truck manufacturers.

The firm in question mentioned that the leak’s been plugged, the anomalies have also been corrected and all the possible measures have been taken. Also the clients have been informed.

The firm’s Korean division which contains over 6,000 reports and French division were also under attack outing thousands of user data and test reports of its clients.

SGS servers are probably going to have quite a financial impact for its clients and customers.

“The SGS company servers have laid bare legitimate reports and it’s bound to have serious implications as hackers have all the access to the kind of files on the DarkWeb”, said J Prasanna, CEO, Cyber Security and Privacy Foundation Pte Ltd, Singapore.

According to him the situation clearly points to the actual storage devices being compromised.

The concerned firms were questioned about the damage to which Shell replied that they are strongly focused on ensuring high standards for its customers.

There's been a significant rise in the number of dark web listings for malware and other hacking tools which target the enterprise, and an increasing number of underground vendors are touting tools that are designed to target particular industries.

A study by cybersecurity company Bromium and criminologists at the University of Surrey involved researchers studying underground forums and interacting with cyber-criminal vendors. The study found that the dark web is fast becoming a significant source of bespoke malware.

In many cases, the dark web sellers demonstrated intimate knowledge of email systems, networks and even cybersecurity protocols in a way that suggests they themselves have spent a lot of time inside enterprise networks, raising questions about security for some companies.

"What surprised me is the extent you could obtain malware targeting enterprise, you could obtain operational data relating to enterprise," Mike McGuire, senior lecturer in Criminology at the University of Surrey and author of the study, told ZDNet.

"There seems to be an awareness and sophistication among these cyber criminals, to go for the big fry, to go where the money is, as a criminal, and the enterprise is providing that," he said, adding: "What surprised me is just how easy it is to get hold of it if you want to."

McGuire and his team interacted with around 30 sellers on dark web marketplaces – sometimes on forums, sometimes via encrypted channels, sometimes by email – and the findings have been detailed in the Behind the Dark Net Black Mirror report.

The study calculated that since 2016, there's been a 20 percent rise in the number of dark web listings that have the potential to harm the enterprise.

Malware and distributed denial of service (DDoS) form almost half of the attacks on offer – a quarter of the listings examined advertised malware and one in five offered DDoS and botnet services. Other common services targeting enterprises that were for sale include espionage tools, such as remote-access Trojans and keyloggers.

The arrest of two Delhi youths for the import and sale of illegal marijuana through the darknet in December last year sparked widespread discussion on the rising prominence of the darknet in India. With dark net being the new market for drug peddlers and illegal traders, it is slowly becoming one of the most challenging problems to be tackled in this cyber age.

What is the darknet?

The world wide web can be divided into three categories- the surface web, the deep web and the dark web. While pages on the surface web(visible web ) are indexed and can be easily accessed by the public, pages on the deep web are not indexed and hence cannot be readily accessed. The content of the deep web is hidden behind HTTP forms and includes many common uses such as webmail, online banking, and services that users must pay for, and which is protected by a paywall, such as a video on demand, some online magazines and newspapers, and many more. Content of the deep web can be located and accessed by a direct URL or IP address and may require a password or other security access past the public website page. The dark web is that part of the internet which can be accessed only by ‘overlay networks ‘ and needs special browsers like TOR to access. Browsers like TOR ensure anonymity to the host as well as the user, by protecting the IP address with its ‘overlay network’ structure.

Illicit drugs, weapons and online fraud : the endless dangers of darknet

The promise of anonymity the darknet offers has led to an alarming increase in its use in the last 4 years. A 2015 study showed that drugs are the most traded commodity on the dark web and 26 per cent of its content can be classified as ‘child exploitation’. A December 2014 study by Gareth Owen from the University of Portsmouth found that the most commonly hosted type of content on Tor was child pornography, followed by black markets. Stolen credit card details, forged documents, counterfeit currency and weapons are the other types of content. Reports of crowdfunded assassinations, hitmen and live streamed murders are believed to be available on the darknet.

How does it work?

Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin are used for transactions on the darknet. Purchases on the darknet come with reviews and ratings just like on Amazon and Flipkart and are delivered to the customer’s doorstep just like any other order. Service providers like ‘escrow’ ensure that the transaction is made to the seller only after the customer receives the package. Often disguised, these illegal products mostly make their way through customs to the customers' doorstep.

Cracking the whip :

Though highly evasive, browsers like Tor aren’t completely untraceable. In early November, a coordinated action by the FBI and Europol known as Operation Onymous seized dozens of Tor hidden services, including three of the six most popular drug markets on the Dark Web. For now, just how the feds located those sites remains a mystery.

“ The Interpol, Europol and the FBI are the ones striving hard to keep the darknet dangers in check”, says J.Prasanna, Director of Cyber Security and Privacy Foundation, Singapore.

” The first step towards net safety comes down to parental supervision”, says J .Prasanna who provides dark web monitoring for banks.

“ The Indian government should ensure stringent punishment for the offenders using darknet for illegal trade and activities. The police department too should be technologically advanced to handle such crimes”, says V.Rajendran, Chairman, Digital Security Association of India.


The bright side :

It would be safe to say not everything is dark about the darknet. The privacy it provides is a major attraction to many who are looking to escape the watchful eyes of service providers and federal agencies. Anonymous messenger services and access to tonnes of resources (data, books, documents) argues the use of darknet for good.

Author:
Yamuna Chandran

A serial hacker who goes by the name of Gnosticplayers has released another 65.5 million records of users last week taking his grand total of 932 million records overall, with the consequences of the data pool as yet unknown. Since mid-February, Gnosticplayers has been putting batches of hacked data on Dream Market, which is a dark web marketplace for selling illegal products like hacking tools guns and drugs.

"The hacker's name is Gnosticplayers, and he's responsible for the hacks of 44 companies, including last week's revelations," the ZDNet reported late on Monday. The names of big companies that were hit included UnderArmor, 500px, ShareThis, MyHeritage and GfyCat. The releases have been grouped in four rounds -- Round 1 (620 million user records), Round 2 (127 million user records), Round 3 (93 million user records), and Round 4 (26.5 million user records).

"Last week, the hacker notified ZDNet about his latest release -- Round 5 -- containing the data of 65.5 million users, which the hacker claims to have been taken from six companies: gaming platform Mindjolt, digital mall Wanelo, e-invitations and RSVP platform Evite, South Korean travel company Yanolja, women's fashion store Moda Operandi, and Apple repair center iCracked," the report added.

Earlier in March, the serial hacker stole and posted personal data of close to 843 million users of various popular websites. The companies impacted include GameSalad, Estante Virtual, Coubic, LifeBear, Bukalapak and Youthmanual.

Blockchain and cryptocurrency related crimes are something heard about in a very scarce quantity. But this week, a 37 year-old man in the US has been sentenced to one year and one day in prison for fraud in connection with a Bitcoin $BTC▲2.4% phishing scheme designed to rob victims of their cryptocurrency.

Michael Richo was allegedly running an elaborate bitcoin phishing scheme, all with the purpose of stealing confidential information from unaware victims, including various sums of cryptocurrency which they held.

Richo, of New Haven, was also ordered to forfeit $352,000 in cash, various computers and electronic devices, such as digital and hardware-based wallets, which contained a vast array of different precious metals and virtual coins that he purchased with the proceeds of his offense.

It was during the trial that evidence, such as court documents from the trial in question, as well as supplementary statements, illustrate just where Richo was going in order to target individuals for his Phishing attacks – The Dark Web.

Per court documents associated with Richo’s case, he will be subject to three years of supervised release once he’s out of prison. His operation involved targeting individuals on the dark web using marketplaces.

He did so by posting fake links to online marketplaces on dark web forums. Once users clicked on them, these links would then direct users to fake login pages that resembled the real login pages for various dark web marketplaces. Once the victim entered his credentials, the hacker would steal them. He would then monitor the individual’s Bitcoin balance at the real marketplace and would withdraw the coins once the person deposited the funds. He would then either deposit the funds directly to his bitcoin wallet, or sell them on cryptocurrency exchanges for US dollars. The US dollars obtained as a result were deposited into bank accounts under his control or provided to him through Green Dot Cards, Western Union transfers, and MoneyGram transfers.

Academics from Greece have devised a new browser-based attack that can allow hackers to run malicious code inside users' browsers even after users have closed or navigated away from the web page on which they got infected.

This new attack, called MarioNet, opens the door for assembling giant botnets from users' browsers. These botnets can be used for in-browser crypto-mining (crypto jacking), DDoS attacks, malicious files hosting/sharing, distributed password cracking, creating proxy networks, advertising click-fraud, and traffic stats boosting, researchers said.
The MarioNet attack is an upgrade to a similar concept of creating a browser-based botnet that was described in the Puppetnets research paper 12 years ago, in 2007.

The difference between the two is that MarioNet can survive after users close the browser tab or move away from the website hosting the malicious code.
This is possible because modern web browsers now support a new API called Service Workers. This mechanism allows a website to isolate operations that rendering a page's user interface from operations that handle intense computational tasks so that the web page UI doesn't freeze when processing large quantities of data.

Technically, Service Workers are an update to an older API called Web Workers. However, unlike web workers, a service worker, once registered and activated, can live and run in the page's background, without requiring the user to continue browsing through the site that loaded the service worker.

MarioNet (a clever spelling of "marionette") takes advantage of the powers provided by service workers in modern browsers.

The attack routine consists of registering a service worker when the user lands on an attacker-controlled website and then abusing the Service Worker SyncManager interface to keep the service worker alive after the user navigates away.

The attack is silent and doesn't require any type of user interaction because browsers don't alert users or ask for permission before registering a service worker. Everything happens under the browser's hood as the user waits for the website to load, and users have no clue that websites have registered service workers as there's no visible indicator in any web browser.