Ukrainian law enforcement authorities arrested 51 suspects believed to have been selling stolen personal data that belonged to hundreds of millions of people (US and Europe) worldwide on hacking forums.
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«As a result of the operation, approximately 100 personal data databases concerning the period 2020-2021» were seized, said the Cyberpolice Department of the National Police of Ukraine.
The seized databases contained information on more than 300 million citizens of Ukraine, Europe and the United States».
After this large‑scale operation, the Ukrainian police shut down one of the biggest sites used to sell personal information that had been stolen from both Ukrainians and foreigners (the site name was not disclosed in the press release).
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In the most closed illegal market, the suspects were selling a wide range of stolen personal data, including phone numbers, surnames, first names, addresses, and, in some cases, vehicle classification information.
The suspects were arrested after the November operation named “DATA”, aimed at stopping the illegal distribution of stolen personal data to illegal online markets.
Ukraine has been cracking down on cybercrime activity within its borders throughout the year, with recent arrests of threat actors behind DDoS, ransomware gang members, and money laundering.
Last month, Ukraine's Security Service (SSU) arrested five suspects in Kyiv and Kharkiv, believed to be members of the international hacking group «Phoenix» specializing in remote mobile device compromise.
In September, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) also took down a network of six call centers in Lviv that were used by a fraud scheme to deceive cryptocurrency investors worldwide.
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As a scale measure, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said in May that over $80 million was lost to investment scams in cryptocurrency, based on roughly 7,000 reports received since October 2020.
Information source: bleepingcomputer.com
