Law enforcement authorities closed in an international collaboration, VPN services that provided safe havens to cybercriminals. These VPN services were used to carry out ransomware attacks, web skimming, spear phishing and account theft.
The virtual private network Safe-Inet (VPN), which was used by criminals from all over the world, has been shut down since December 21, 2020, in a coordinated law enforcement operation led by the Reutlingen Police in Germany together with Europol and other law enforcement from around the world. Europol issued the announcement for seizure. Today the domains that were closed show the following message
The Safe-net service was terminated and its infrastructure seized in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the France and the United States. The three domains seized are insorg.org, safe-inet.com and safe-inet.net. The servers went down and the homepage shown above (created by Europol), appeared online soon after the domains were seized.
The Safe-Inet domain has been active for over a decade and has been used by some of the biggest cyber criminals, such as ransomware gangs, e-skimming and more.
Administrators were selling the VPN service to cybercriminals as one of the best available if one wanted to avoid detection by the authorities.
The prices were very high because the service offered up to 5 levels of anonymous VPN connections.
Authorities were able to identify around 250 companies worldwide that criminals were spying on using this VPN. These companies were warned of impending ransomware attacks on their systems so they could take the necessary measures protections.
The following is a list of law enforcement agencies involved:
Germany: Reutlingen Police Headquarters
Netherlands: National Police
Switzerland: Canton Police (Kantonspolizei Aargau)
United States: Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI
France: Centrale de la Police Judiciaire
Europol: European Cybercrime Center (EC3)
