December 6, 2024 By Pieter Arntz
A coordinated action between several European law enforcement agencies shut down an online marketplace called Manson Market that sold stolen data to any interested cybercriminal.
What made this market attractive for cybercriminals was that they could buy data sorted by region and account balance with advanced filtering options. This allowed the criminals to carry out targeted fraud with greater efficiency.
The law enforcement investigation started in 2022 when investigators were able to track very specific information used by scammers to the specialized marketplace. The scammers participated in fraudulent phone calls in which they impersonated bank employees to extract sensitive information, such as addresses and security answers, from their victims.
A network of fake online shops set up to phish for payment information provided one of the sources of stolen data.
Coordinated by Europol, the police in Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, and Norway seized the infrastructure of over 50 servers. With this, more than 200 terabytes of digital evidence have been collected.