A notorious ‘phishing-as-a-service’ (PaaS) platform known as ‘16shop' has been shut down in a global investigation coordinated by INTERPOL, with Indonesian authorities arresting its operator and one of its facilitators, with another arrested in Japan.
The three arrests, which concluded with actions against a suspect last month, was made possible due to the intensive intelligence-sharing between the INTERPOL General Secretariat’s cybercrime directorate, national law enforcement in Indonesia, Japan and the United States and private sector partners including Cyber Defense Institute, Group-IB, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 and Trend Micro, with added support from Cybertoolbelt. The PaaS platform sold ‘phishing kits’ to hackers seeking to defraud Internet users through email scams where victims typically receive an email with a pdf file or link that redirects to a site requesting the victims’ credit card or other personally identifiable information. This information is then stolen and used to extract money from the victims.
Phishing is considered the most prevalent cyber threat in the world, and it is estimated that up to 90 per cent of data breaches are linked to successful phishing attacks, making it a major source of stolen credentials and information.
www.interpol.int
