The marketplace essentially sold subscriptions to the compromised computer systems, allowing users to access stolen credentials at will, even if the victim updated their passwords. Senior DOJ officials say Genesis was operated by a group of hackers, who ran a sophisticated malware program which infected millions of users over the world to harvest their data. Warmenhoven said the seizure of Genesis was 'a step in the right direction for clamping down on bot markets, but there is a long way to go if the goal is to eradicate the illegal trade in online identities.' 'Unfortunately, when one of these sites is removed, it creates a vacuum that could be quickly filled by others,' Adrianus Warmenhoven, a cybersecurity expert at NordVPN, told. The raid on Genesis follows similar US-led enforcement actions in the past year against other darknet hacker marketplaces, including Hydra Market and BreachForums.īut experts warned that hacker gangs are often slippery, and similar markets often soon re-emerge. US Justice Department Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement that many of the forum's users around the world had been arrested. The investigation into Genesis is ongoing, officials said.
'Today's takedown of Genesis Market is a demonstration of the FBI's commitment to disrupting and dismantling key services used by criminals to facilitate cybercrime,' said FBI Director Christopher Wray in a statement. The US Treasury Department called the Genesis Market 'one of the world's largest illicit marketplaces' in a statement announcing full blocking sanctions against the site.
In coordinated raids around the world, more than 200 searches were carried out and about 120 people were arrested, including 24 arrests in and around the British town of Grimsby, UK law enforcement officials said.Ī senior FBI official told that suspects were also arrested within the US in connection with the bust, but did not offer details on the number of arrests or the charges. The stolen data included passwords for services such as online banking, Facebook, Amazon, PayPal and Netflix, as well as digital fingerprints that can be exploited by criminals to bypass online security checks by spoofing the victim's device. The hacker cyber-bazaar, known as Genesis Market, was seized in a multinational crackdown dubbed 'Operation Cookie Monster' after the site's specialization in stolen digital fingerprints, known as cookies.Īccording to the FBI, Genesis Market offered access to data stolen from more than 1.5 million compromised computers around the world, containing over 80 million account access credentials. International law enforcement agencies led by the FBI have seized a sprawling dark web marketplace popular with cybercriminals, where stolen passwords were sold for as little as $1 each, officials announced Wednesday.
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