On Tuesday, a notice was posted on a dark web marketplace favored by cybercriminals called Genesis Market that all of its domains had been confiscated by international law enforcement agencies.
The site displayed a banner announcing that the FBI had taken possession of domains owned by the organization, with logos of other police organizations from Canada, Europe, and Australia, as well as cybersecurity firm Qintel, prominently featured. There has been no comment from the FBI or Qintel at this time in response to messages requesting clarification.
The National Crime Agency of Britain, whose emblem was likewise presented on the site, verified its contribution to the international campaign to combat cybercriminals. However, they decided to hold off on making any statements until the planned announcement on Tuesday.
Reuters was unable to acquire contact information for Genesis Market’s administrators at the time of reporting. The FBI expressed its interest in gathering information about them by urging anyone who had interacted with them to get in touch through email.
According to Louise Ferrett, an analyst at Searchlight Cyber, a British cybersecurity firm, Genesis had a specialization in the sale of digital products, particularly “browser fingerprints” that were collected from computers that were infected with malware. These fingerprints typically contained sensitive information like credentials, internet protocol addresses, cookies, and other browser or operating system details.
As a result, criminals could use them to circumvent anti-fraud solutions such as device fingerprinting or multi-factor authentication. The site had been operational since 2018.
