Law enforcement authorities shut down in an international partnership, VPN services they provided safe καταφύγια σε εγκληματίες στον κυβερνοχώρο. Οι συγκεκριμένες υπηρεσίες VPN χρησιμοποιούνταν για τη διεξαγωγή επιθέσεων ransomware, web skimming, spear phishing και κλοπή λογαριασμών.
The Safe-Inet virtual private network (VPN), which was used by criminals from around the world, has been shut down since December 21, 2020, in a coordinated law enforcement operation led by policeof Reutlingen, Germany together with Europol and law enforcement agencies 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, 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 immediately after the seizure of the domains.
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 locate about 250 companies worldwide that were spying on criminals using this VPN. These companies have been warned of impending ransomware attacks on their systems so that they can take the necessary precautions.
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)