20 Law Enforcement Agencies Including FBI & Europol Help Shut Down Threatening Darkode Hacker Forum
The internet is full of meeting places for just about any type of viable interest or hobby in life. Ever since the conception of an online forum, folks have flocked to locations, some hidden from the normal internet public, to join in on posts comprised of like-minded ideas and life events. Hackers have long utilized their specific forums to conjure up plans to attack certain entities and even spread malware. One particular forum, known as Darkode, has been a harbor for numerous top level hackers, finally met its demise in an orchestrated takedown by law enforcement agencies from upwards of 20 countries across the globe.
The take-down efforts for putting an end to Darkode was orchestrated primarily by the FBI and Europol's EC3 (European Cybercrime Centre) who with the assistance from law enforcement from 20 other countries. Authorities confirmed that those countries range from The United States of America, Australia, Canada to Romania, United Kingdom and even Brazil. Basically, Darkode was a forum to bring hackers together in one place no matter where they were located.
The take down of the Darkode forum not only consisted of making the domain inaccessible, but it also led to the arrest of 28 individuals where 12 were officially charged and nearly 37 houses were searched to confiscate numerous computers and other equipment.
The Darkode forum has been a convenient location that high profile hacker groups, such as Lizard Squad, were formed. Such groups are known for disrupting massive networks belonging to Xbox, PlayStation and Tor back in December of 2014. Made up of nearly 300 members in total, the Darkode forum is ranked by Interpol as being among the top five forums in the business of concealing hacker ideas, secrets and attack plans.
Darkode, just like many other high-profile hacker forms, is believed to be utilized as a platform for selling personal information. Commonly, in hacker attacks where data is compromised and stolen, the data is then offered to the highest bidders. Darkode is one of the forums that allowed hackers to sell massive amounts of data, which in some instances could be comprised of credit card details, consumer social security numbers, banking account login credentials, and a myriad of other data that could end up in the wrong hands causing serious havoc for others.
During the takedown of Darkode and collecting data from computers obtained as a result of the arrests, authorities were able to verify how much money was being circulated from the sales of compromised data. In some cases, a sole hacker handled selling 3.7 million records from an online dating site selling them for $110. Additionally, according to TribLIVE, a spammer advertising their services could offer to send 1 million emails for $500 among many other services.
Authorities were able to focus their efforts in the right place at the right time to bring these hackers to justice. As such, some of the transactions taking place on Darkode were in abundant amounts and proved to be cheap and easy in many cases – leading authorities down a clear path to catch the cybercrooks red handed.