A 34-yr-aged U.K. countrywide has been arraigned in the U.S. for running a dark web marketplace known as The Serious Deal that specialized in the income of hacking applications and stolen login credentials.
Daniel Kaye, who went by a litany of pseudonyms Popopret, Bestbuy, UserL0ser, and Spdrman, has been billed with five counts of obtain unit fraud and one depend of revenue laundering conspiracy.
Kaye was indicted in April 2021, and subsequently consented to his extradition from Cyprus to the U.S. in September 2022.
“Though living overseas, this defendant allegedly operated an unlawful web-site that made hacking tools and login qualifications readily available for purchase, including those for U.S. govt businesses,” said U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan.
Court docket files display that The Serious Deal, until finally its shutdown in 2016, functioned as a sector for illicit merchandise, like stolen account logins for U.S. federal government desktops, bank accounts, and social media platforms this kind of as Twitter and LinkedIn.
Also peddled by means of the portal had been plundered credit card details, personal data, botnets, hacking tools, unlawful medication, and weapons which ended up listed for sale by suppliers, who experienced their possess profile web pages that made available an solution to rank them.
Some of the U.S. govt computer systems whose credentials have been allegedly offered by Kaye belong to the U.S. Postal Support, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Facilities for Illness Regulate and Avoidance, the National Aeronautics and Area Administration, and the U.S. Navy.
Kaye was formerly arrested by the U.K. regulation enforcement authorities in February 2017, and was subsequently jailed for 32 months in January 2019 for attacking an African phone business that knocked Liberia offline in 2016.
“[Kaye] ran a botnet employing a modified Mirai variant which distribute through zero-working day exploits,” security researcher Marcus Hutchins famous in a sequence of Tweets. “Some of the DDoS assaults we saw were peaking at in excess of 1 Tbps.”
Additionally, the indictment accuses Kaye of conniving with one or extra persons heading by the title “thedarkoverlord” to sell Social Security quantities, not to point out launder the cryptocurrency proceeds of the sale by way of mixing solutions like Bitmixer.io to obscure the funds trails.
“This scenario is an illustration of our persistent perseverance to operate with our worldwide associates to hold criminals accountable no subject how innovative their cyber fraud or their geographic area,” mentioned Keri Farley, Specific Agent in Charge of FBI Atlanta.
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Some parts of this article are sourced from:
thehackernews.com