The Darkmarket forum was an international site where fraudsters brought and sold credit card details and personal data as been shut down, putting a “significant” ring of virtual criminals out of operation, according to the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca). On Tuesday, September 15th the site’s operator, known as Master Splyntr, announced he was shutting the forum. Splyntr wrote on the site, “Recent events have proven that even in our best efforts to expel and deactivate the accounts of suspected LE [Law enforcement], reporters, and security agents, it is obvious that we haven’t been entirely successful.”
The website allowed criminals to exchange information of how to commit online fraud as well as offering details stored on the magnetic strips on the back of credit cards, hardware, personal information and electronic banking details. It had been in operations for three years, and could only be accessed by invitation.
In total, 60 people have been arrested thanks to police international crime specialists infiltrating and identifying users of the website which has been classed as a ‘big success’ by the agency. Included those caught was a Turkish hacker (alias Cha0) who served as one of DarkMarket’s administrators. Cha0 was reputed for selling high-quality ATM-skimming hardware that criminals could attach to cash machines to collect debit card swipes and PIN’s.
Soca said that one of the arrestees had spent £250,000 in six weeks buying personal data which could have been used to make £10m from identity fraud. The deputy director of Soca, Sharon Lemon, called Darkmarket “a one stop shop for the online criminal”.
After the American Secret Service “Operation Firewall” in October 2004, DarkMarket was the only survivor among a handful of crime forums - the top crime site at that time was Shadowcrew.com where the agency used an informant leading to the arrest of twenty-eight fraudsters in co-coordinated raids.
Lord Cyric, an administrator for the DataMarket site, resists the suggestion that this closure markets the end of an era - “That’s what is said about every big board that closes…that is, until the next one.”
We can be sure that the case of cat and mouse between cyber criminals and law enforcement agencies around the world will continue. By providing individuals with knowledge about this form of crime and methods of basic prevention we can only keep our fingers crossed that it does not happen to us.
