The United States Department of Justice announced the seizure of 39 associated domains and servers operated by a group of Cybernetic crimes based in Pakistan.
Websites, administered by a network known as Saim Raza, also known as hearts, were used to sell phishing kits and tools that enable fraud. These sites have been active since at least 2020, aimed at companies and individuals worldwide.
The coordinated operation, carried out in collaboration with the Dutch National Police, aimed to interrupt the activities of this international market that has facilitated cyber crime for years.
The group, which offered services such as email extractors, scam pages and phishing tools kits, mainly victims directed in the United States, leading to more than $ 3 million in financial losses.
According to officials, Saim Raza made these tools widely available and even provided instructional content, such as YouTube videos, to guide users on how to execute malicious schemes.
The resources were designed to avoid anti-SPAM software and help cybercriminals in their fraud operations, especially those involved in commercial email commitment schemes (BEC). BEC fraud generally implies cheating companies to send payments controlled by hackers, resulting in significant financial damage.
The seizure is a critical step to interrupt the global scope of these cybercriminal networks, since it eliminates a key provider of tools used by transnational criminal groups and other malicious actors.
The Department of Justice, which works with the FBI Houston Field Office, stressed the importance of such international cooperation in the fight against cyber crime.
The authorities praised the Netherlands for their important help in the operation, which highlights the growing challenges to address phishing and other forms of cyber crime. The arrest of these markets online demonstrates a growing effort of the global police to stop the propagation of cyber crimes activities that exploit the digital ecosystem for profit.
The FBI continues to investigate the case, and the Department of Justice is working with international partners to track the total scope of the group’s operations and their impact.
