Security News > 2021 > June > International law enforcement op nukes Russian-language DoubleVPN service allegedly favoured by cybercriminals

Europol, the US Department of Justice, and Britain's National Crime Agency have taken down a VPN service they claimed was mainly used by criminals - boasting that they hoovered up "Personal information, logs and statistics" from the site.

The DoubleVPN site went dark yesterday after law enforcement agencies swooped on its servers, with a joint public statement this afternoon confirming that the takedown was genuine.

Europol said the service was "Heavily advertised on both Russian and English-speaking underground cybercrime forums," offering double, triple or even quadruple-layered VPN services to its customers.

Archive.org's last capture of DoubleVPN-dot-com, on 28 June, shows it operating like most other VPN sites - complete with Russian text stating: "We have relatively high prices because customer payments for subscriptions are our only source of income. Ask yourself a question: where do free and cheap VPN services get money to pay for their expenses?".

It seems unlikely that law enforcement would have killed off the service without finding a way of compromising it first - even if only to map out its infrastructure.

John Denley, deputy director of the NCA's National Cyber Crime Unit, said in a statement: "Double VPN was a multi-layered virtual private network service run by cyber criminals, to enable fellow cyber criminals to mask their identities online. It allowed them to anonymously communicate, identify victims then effectively sneak in and conduct reconnaissance on their systems as a precursor to launching a cyber attack."

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/06/30/doublevpn_police_takedown/