Cops put the squeeze on Genesis crime souk denizens, not just the admins this time

2023-04-05 21:45

Working with law enforcement from 15 other nations, the US Department of Justice yesterday seized [PDF] the criminal souk's main website, domains, and servers, and "Conducted a number of law enforcement actions against hundreds of Genesis Market users worldwide" as part of a global law enforcement effort dubbed Operation Cookie Monster, according to a senior FBI official.

According to court documents, in December 2020 the FBI, in conjunction with an unnamed foreign law enforcement, managed to image the Genesis backend server, and downloaded usernames, passwords, email account, search histories, purchase history and comment for 33,000 Genesis Market users and approximately 900,000 individual packages.

Since its inception in 2018, Genesis Market trafficked in access to data stolen from more than 1.5 million compromised computers worldwide, containing more than 80 million stolen access credentials including digital fingerprints, account credentials and cookies, according to the Feds.

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The Genesis Market takedown comes about two weeks after the FBI and international law enforcement shut down BreachForums, another major cybercrime marketplace, and arrested its alleged chief administrator.

"We're going after the users who leverage a service like Genesis Market, and we're doing that on a global scale. The administrators of the services are operating globally, and so are the users."

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/04/05/genesis_market_takedown/

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