back to article Four Brits cuffed as global cyber-crime forum Darkode busted

Coordinated action from law enforcement and judicial authorities across the world has succeeded in taking down Darkode, an English-language cybercriminal forum. Darkode.com was established in 2007 and was as notable for its size and popularity as for the malicious activities transacted there, which included carding, selling …

  1. rtb61

    What is interesting about the group, is the really tight age grouping, something that rarely occurs with the spread of the internet. This would suggest all of them joined during a similar timed activity. I wonder if they were all attending various universities during a similar time period.

    1. Cuddles

      "really tight age grouping"

      I'm not sure ages ranging from 20 to 53 counts as particularly tight. The latter is old enough to be the former's grandfather (only just, but entirely legally). Even ignoring the eldest, just a range of 20-26 is a big enough range that they'd be unlikely to have met in school or university.

      1. Chris Byers

        Re: "really tight age grouping"

        McDonalds then?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Until next time

    Does anyone keep count how many of these forums were closed? It's obviously not doing much to eliminate the threat, since there will always be people to leverage their skills for ill gotten gains until such opportunities exist with the current state of the internet and its services.

    How about instead of coordinating a multinational raid which takes years and millions, use those resources and time to fund audits and patch vulnerabilities, instead of hogging 0days for snooping on 'terrorists'.

  3. Will Godfrey Silver badge

    Another interesting point is that this was achieved without all the new laws that we keep getting told are essential to catch crims.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Low hanging fruit

      I'm just embarrassed those arrested called themselves hackers; they didn't go to a hacking-orientated website via an anonymising VPN service (iPredator, etc.). This is a bit like the London Met hiking the crimes-solved numbers by fining speeding drivers on the A40.

      1. mythicalduck
        Mushroom

        Re: Low hanging fruit

        >anonymising VPN service (iPredator, etc.)

        Didn't you know? iPredator is run by GCHQ ;)

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Low hanging fruit

          This would not actually surprise me! :>

      2. Cynic_999

        Re: Low hanging fruit

        "

        ... didn't go to a hacking-orientated website via an anonymising VPN service ...

        "

        I had assumed that the website in question was an .onion site like Silkroad was, in which case it would only have been accessible via Tor, but I don't know whether that was or was not the case. Users of .onion sites are usually exposed after law enforcement manage to locate the server and take it over without the users' knowledge. They then use social engineering techniques or use exploits of their own to expose users' real IP addresses.

        Commercial VPN services are useless to hide the identity of criminals, because law enforcement agencies can issue a warrant to the VPN company to hand over their logs (all or almost all VPN providers keep logs that can be used to match outgoing to incoming IP addresses even if they say that they don't).

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