Ukrainian police detained members of a Darknet infrastructure

Ukrainian law enforcement officers blocked the activities of members of a transnational hacker group. The suspects reportedly worked on the legalization of money from the Darknet. Police made several suspect searches and subsequently extracted software used by attackers to gain access to victims’ digital wallets. Ukrainian police worked with the joint forces of the Security Service of Ukraine under the procedural guidance of the Office of the Prosecutor General. That is another successful job of Ukrainian executive authorities towards ruining the cybercrime infrastructure.

Ukrainian police arrested suspects for legalizing dirty money

In the process of investigation police found that suspects disguised themselves under different nicknames on the Darknet network. They used a large network of fictitious persons and financial services. Suspects conducted complex operations on legalizing criminal profits as a part of cybercriminal service. Having conducted the authorized searches, as a result, police stopped the illegal manufacturing, sale and use of homemade software and hardware. All of those illegally manufactured appliances criminals used to spread malware and gain access to the digital wallets of the victims. Investigative actions continue. Foreign customers of these criminal machinations will be called to court shortly.¹

What is Darknet, or Dark web?

Darknet or dark web has earned itself a very gloomy reputation. Actually, it lives up to that name. This place harbors all sorts of criminals from around the world. It is also important to distinguish between the dark web and the deep web. The second just include anything that requires sign-in credentials or is placed behind a paywall. Special content blocked from indexing also goes here. Fee-based content, membership websites, confidential corporate web pages and medical records make up the deep web. Specialists estimated that between 96% and 99% of the internet goes for the deep web.

Another part of the Internet a “clear web”. Standard web browsers allow access to this tiny portion of the web. Dark web or Darknet in its turn presents itself as a subset of the deep web. It is intentionally hidden and requires a specific browser—Tor—to access. No one can for sure estimate the total size of the dark web. Some say it sums up to around 5% of the total internet.

Why cybercriminals love Dark Web so much?

On the dark web you can buy all manner of drugs, guns, credit card numbers, counterfeit money, hacked Netflix accounts, stolen subscription credentials and malicious software. You can hire hackers to conduct attacks on your behalf. Researchers Thomas Rid and Daniel Moore of King’s College in London ranked the contents of 2,723 live dark web sites over a five-week period in 2015 and came up with the result that 57% host illegal material.

A 2019 study, Into the Web of Profit, held by Dr. Michael McGuires at the University of Surrey, shows that things have escalated. The number of dark web listings that present danger for an enterprise has risen by 20% since 2016. Of all listings (except those selling drugs), 60% could potentially present harm to enterprises.

1. Press-release of Ukrainian National Police on hackers capturing