US authorities working with law enforcement officials abroad have
shut down the Darkode online forum used by cyber-criminals around the
world and charged 12 people linked to the site, the Justice Department
said on Wednesday.
US Attorney David Hickton announced the charges in Pittsburgh and called Darkode "a cyber hornet's nest of criminal hackers."
"Of
the roughly 800 criminal Internet forums worldwide, Darkode represented
one of the gravest threats to the integrity of data on computers in the
United States," he said.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and
US attorney's office in Pittsburgh led the investigation, known as
Operation Shrouded Horizon. It included authorities from Europol and 20
countries in Europe and Latin America as well as Israel, Nigeria and
Australia.
The Justice Department said 12 people were charged,
mostly in the United States, in what it called the largest coordinated
international law enforcement effort ever directed at an online
cyber-criminal forum.
Europol said there had been 28 arrests.
The
investigation is continuing as authorities look into a total of 70
Darkode members and associates worldwide, the Justice Department said.
Cyber-criminals
used Darkode to trade stolen data as well as hacking and spam tools and
services, and methods for cyber-attacks on governments and companies. It
was an invitation-only website, hidden by well protected Internet
servers.
The darkode.com website on Wednesday showed logos of
various law enforcement agencies and a notice saying the domain had been
seized by the FBI as part of an investigation with international
agencies.
"Darkode was unusual because it was a virtual crossroads
for criminal hackers from a variety of languages, countries and
backgrounds," said Brian Krebs, who writes about cyber-crime on
krebsonsecurity.com and had infiltrated the forum in order to study it.
"For
many years, some of the most accomplished cyber-criminals sold their
wares and services on this forum, including everything from
denial-of-service attacks for hire to malicious software and stolen
identities and credit cards."
Among those charged was Johan Anders
Gudmunds of Sollebrunn, Sweden, known as Synthet!c, who the Justice
Department said was Darkode's administrator. Residents of Pennsylvania,
New York, Florida, Indiana, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Slovenia, Spain and
Pakistan also were indicted.
Those charged are accused of crimes
including conspiring to commit computer fraud, wire fraud and money
laundering, selling and using malware programs that could steal data
from computers and cellphones and using "bot" networks to take over
computers and send spam emails.
© Thomson Reuters 2015
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