A major international law enforcement operation led by the Dutch National Police has taken down an underground virtual private network (VPN) used by cybercriminals to conceal their activities while conducting harmful cyberattacks such as phishing campaigns, hacking operations, and ransomware attacks. The coordinated takedown also included agencies such as Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, Eurojust, the FBI, and the UK National Crime Agency. The VPN, called DoubleVPN, offered users the ability to mask their locations and identities, according to the law enforcement group.
DoubleVPN was advertised heavily throughout Russian and English-speaking dark web cybercrime forums, touted as a tool for criminals such as ransomware gangs to hide their activities from law enforcement. The cheapest option on DoubleVPN was just $25, while more expensive services offered double, triple, and quadruple VPN connections to its criminal clients. Servers hosting DoubleVPN across the world have been seized and web domains relating to the service have been taken down by law enforcement. Logs, statistics, and personal information kept by DoubleVPN about all of its customers were also obtained by law enforcement, stating that the owners of the tool failed to provide the services they promised.
Read More: This VPN service used by ransomware gangs was just taken down by police
