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- The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Saturday arrested the Owner of Deer.IO in New York who was allegedly involved in buying and selling information and details of hacked accounts.
- DEER.IO was a Russian-based cyber platform that allowed offenders to purchase access to cyber storefronts on the platform and sell their criminal products or services.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Saturday arrested the Owner of Deer.IO in New York who was allegedly involved in buying and selling information and details of hacked accounts. The accused, Russian hacker Kirill Victorovich Firsov has been charged with crimes related to the hacking of U.S. companies for customers’ personal information. The Website has been seized by the FBI in accordance with a seizure warrant obtained by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California.
THE CRIMES
DEER.IO was a Russian-based cyber platform that allowed offenders to purchase access to cyber storefronts on the platform and sell their criminal products or services. According to the US Attorney’s Office Southern District of California, the platform began its malicious services in October 2013, It has been claimed that they had a network of over 24,000 active shops with sales exceeding $17 million.
The platform offered a turnkey online storefront design and hosting platform, through which cybercriminals could advertise and sell their products,such as harvested credentials and hacked servers and services such as performing some cybercrimes on an on-demand and/or targeted basis.
Any criminal who wanted to purchase information from DEER.IO could just use their simple web browser and go to their web domain. From there, they would be redirected to DEER.IO’s storefronts. FBI states that DEER.IO was operating a search function which facilitated individuals in searching for hacked accounts from specific companies or PII from specific countries.The users could even navigate through the platform, and were able to scan stores advertising a wide range of hacked accounts or cyber criminal services for sale.
HOW THE FBI CAUGHT THEM?
Around 4th March 2020, the FBI purchased around 1100 gaming accounts from one of DEER.IO’s storefronts for under $20 in Bitcoin. After the payment was complete, the FBI gained access to these accounts’ username and password via the storefront. From the 1,100 gamer accounts that were bought in the first purchase, 249 accounts were hacked Company A accounts.
Company A even clarified that in case a hacker gains access to the username and password of a user account, then the hacker could use that account. In some of the cases, the payment accounts of users are also linked to the gaming accounts and then the hackers can make more in-game purchases using that information.
Furthermore, after purchasing more accounts from some other storefronts, again by paying in Bitcoin, the FBI were able to track them. They verified information from some of the accounts to the information of some residents, including Social Security Number, from San Diego County.
The U.S. Attorney Robert Brewer said that there is a robust underground market for hacked and stolen information. He added that the hackers are a threat to the US economy,their privacy and the national security. Activities of such kind won’t be tolerated.
