Mar 24, 2024NewsroomRansomware / Threat Intelligence

German authorities have announced the takedown of an illicit underground marketplace called Nemesis Market that peddled narcotics, stolen data, and various cybercrime services.

The Federal Criminal Police Office (aka Bundeskriminalamt or BKA) said it seized the digital infrastructure associated with the darknet service located in Germany and Lithuania and confiscated €94,000 ($102,107) in cryptocurrency assets.

The operation, conducted in collaboration with law enforcement agencies from Germany, Lithuania, and the U.S., took place on March 20, 2024, following an extensive investigation that commenced in October 2022.

Founded in 2021, Nemesis Market is estimated to have had more than 150,000 user accounts and 1,100 seller accounts from all over the world prior to its shutdown. Almost 20$ of the seller accounts were from Germany.

“The range of goods available on the marketplace included narcotics, fraudulently obtained data and goods, as well as a selection of cybercrime services such as ransomware, phishing, or DDoS attacks,” the BKA said.

The agency said further investigations against criminal sellers and users of the platform are presently ongoing. That said, no arrests have been made.

The development comes a month after another coordinated law enforcement operation took down the LockBit ransomware group, taking control of the outfit’s servers and arresting three affiliates from Poland and Ukraine. The disruption prompted the gang to relaunch its cyber extortion operation.

In recent months, German authorities have also taken down Kingdom Market and Crimemarket, both of which boasted of thousands of users and offered a wide array of money laundering and cybercrime services.

Dec 21, 2023NewsroomDark Web / Cybercrime

German law enforcement has announced the disruption of a dark web platform called Kingdom Market that specialized in the sales of narcotics and malware to “tens of thousands of users.”

The exercise, which involved collaboration from authorities from the U.S., Switzerland, Moldova, and Ukraine, began on December 16, 2023, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) said.

Kingdom Market is said to have been accessible over the TOR and Invisible Internet Project (I2P) anonymization networks since at least March 2021, trafficking in illegal narcotics as well as advertising malware, criminal services, and forged documents.

As many as 42,000 products have been sold via several hundred seller accounts on the English language platform prior to its takedown, with 3,600 of them originating from Germany.

Transactions on the Kingdom Market were facilitated through cryptocurrency payments in the form of Bitcoin, Litecoin, Monero, and Zcash, with the website operators receiving a 3% commission for processing the sales of the illicit goods.

“The operators of ‘Kingdom Market’ are suspected of commercially operating a criminal trading platform on the Internet and of illicit trafficking in narcotics,” the BKA said, adding an investigation into the seized server infrastructure is ongoing.

In addition to the seizure, one person connected to the running of Kingdom Market has been charged in the U.S. with identity theft and money laundering. Alan Bill, who also goes by the aliases Vend0r and KingdomOfficial, has been described as a Slovakian national.

The development comes days after another coordinated law enforcement effort saw the dismantling of the BlackCat ransomware’s dark web infrastructure, prompting the group to respond to the seizure of its data leak site by wresting control of the page, claiming they had “unseized” it.