X-Industry

The phishing-as-a-service platform 16shop was taken down on 8 August as part of a global investigation led by Interpol.  Law enforcement arrested a 21-year-old Indonesian man accused of administering the platform, along with two other individuals involved in its operation: one in Indonesia and one in Japan.  The police also confiscated electronic devices and several luxury items belonging to the suspects.

According to a report from cybersecurity firm Group-IB, which was involved in the takedown,

A New York man accused of running the popular cybercrime forum BreachForums was recently arrested and charged.  He is believed to be Pompompurin, an individual whose online moniker was mentioned in several high-profile hacking stories in the past years.   It is sad to know that this criminal used the name Pompompurin, which is the name of a good natured Golden Retriever dog character introduced by the Japanese company Sanrio (Hello Kitty) in 1996.  The suspect is 21-year-old Conor Brian Fitzpatr

An Illinois man was found guilty on 16 September 2021 by a US federal court jury for running websites that allowed paying users to launch powerful distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks that flood targeted computers with information and prevent them from being able to access the Internet.

A 32 man from St. Charles, Illinois, was found guilty of three felonies: one count of conspiracy to commit unauthorized impairment of a protected computer, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud,

Law enforcement is on a roll.  Europol members recently arrested numerous people in connection with a US law enforcement sting; last week Mexico arrested hacktivist Commander X; and now police in Ukraine reported earlier this week they arrested members of a major ransomware gang.  The arrests mark the first time a law enforcement agency has announced a mass arrest of a prolific hacker group that had extorted Americans by either encrypting an organization's files or threatening to leak them to th