Germany has shut down 47 cryptocurrency exchanges used by cybercriminals to exchange funds anonymously, providing significant amounts of user and transaction data for further investigations.
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Europol and law enforcement officers of six countries shut down the iServer phishing platform, which had 483,000 victims, mostly from Latin American countries.
Law enforcement officers from Spain, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru made 17 arrests and seized more than 900 items, including electronic devices, phones, cars and weapons. The main administrator of iServer, an Argentinian citizen who ran the platform for five years, is currently in custody. The iServer platform has been used by cybercriminals for phishing attacks, including collecting data to unlock stolen phones. More than 2,000 users were registered on the platform, who provided services for unlocking stolen phones to other criminals.
Cybercriminals sent victims SMS messages that looked like official messages from Apple. After clicking on the link, users were taken to a phishing page that collected credentials to unlock the phones. As a result, the network was able to unlock more than 1.2 million phones. Europol, together with local law enforcement agencies, identified most of the victims.
Phishing as a service has become an important component of the cybercriminal economy. Platforms like iServer allow low-tech criminals to launch sophisticated credential harvesting attacks. This makes them dangerous and accessible even to less experienced criminals.
This operation by Europol and national law enforcement agencies was an important step in the fight against cybercrime, in particular phishing attacks and the illegal use of mobile devices.
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