Australian suspects arrested in global cybercrime raid
Jacob Shteyman |
Australian police have helped crack an online criminal marketplace where the data of thousands of Australians was being traded on the black market.
A coalition of law enforcement agencies around the world – including in the US, UK, Netherlands and Australia – shut down the cybercrime website Genesis Market on Tuesday, executing 120 arrests and over 200 searches.
The invite-only marketplace is used by criminals to buy and sell sensitive data such as login credentials, browsing history and autofill form data, for as little as one Australian dollar.
“This is now the new normal for our communities,” Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Scott Lee told reporters on Thursday.
“With cyber having real world impacts on people in their homes, it’s the modern burglary.”
At the time it was taken down, the website offered access to more than 1.5 million compromised computers, each containing the information of dozens of accounts.
Users attempting to enter the Genesis site on Thursday were greeted by an FBI graphic that read: “This website has been seized”.
The AFP alongside NSW, Queensland, Victoria and WA police arrested ten suspects and seized computer equipment, drugs, gold bars, cash and equipment to make fake IDs as part of Operation Zinger.
As well as charging the suspects with fraud offences, police will allege they were involved in drug trafficking and dealing in the proceeds of crime.
Investigators identified 36,000 Australian devices for sale on Genesis Market, which had the potential to cause $46m worth of financial harm to the community.
“This marketplace has been a key enabler of cybercrime around the world, impacting not only our global community, but having real-world impacts to members of our community in terms of the impacts of fraud and identity theft that have been committed,” Mr Lee said.
Individuals were able to use the site to purchase a packaged dataset that would allow them to gain access to a victim’s government services and online banking, he said.
FBI legal attache Nitiana Mann said global law enforcement agencies are stepping up their co-ordination to counter the growing digital threat.
“Cybercrime sees no borders,” she said.
Arrests have so far targeted purported buyers of the illegal data, but holding the individuals behind the website accountable could prove a harder task, given they remain outside the jurisdiction of enforcement agencies.
Ms Mann revealed one administrator of Genesis is located in Russia and another in Asia.
Investigations are ongoing but police say they have already arrested their highest-value targets, including a 31-year-old man at Box Hill in Victoria who allegedly spent over $50,000 buying information from the marketplace.
Mr Lee urged anyone who believes they may have been affected to take action to protect themselves, advising them to change their passwords and run antivirus software on their devices.
There is no evidence data from the high-profile Medibank, Optus and Latitude breaches was being sold on Genesis, Mr Lee said.
Cyber Security Minister Clare O’Neil on Tuesday said virtually every Australian had either been directly impacted or had a family member affected by the attacks, warning they were only the tip of the iceberg of cyber threats Australia would likely face over the next decade.
AAP
