By James Pearson and Michael Holden
LONDON (Reuters) – International law enforcement agencies have seized a dark web marketplace popular with cybercriminals, according to a notice posted to the site on Tuesday.
A banner plastered across Genesis Market’s site said domains belonging to the organization had been seized by the FBI. Logos of other European, Canadian, and Australian police organizations were emblazoned across the site as well, along with that of cybersecurity firm Qintel.
The FBI and Qintel did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
Britain’s National Crime Agency – whose logo was also on the site – confirmed it was “participating in an international law enforcement operation targeting cyber criminals” but said it would not offer any further comment ahead of an announcement planned for Tuesday.
Reuters could not immediately locate contact details for the Genesis Market’s administrators. The FBI seemed eager for information about them as well, saying in its seizure notice that anyone who had been in touch with them should “Email us, we’re interested.”
Genesis was specialized in the sale of digital products, especially “browser fingerprints” harvested from computers infected with malicious software, said Louise Ferrett, an analyst at British cybersecurity firm Searchlight Cyber.
Because those fingerprints often include credentials, cookies, internet protocol addresses and other browser or operating system details, they can be used by criminals to bypass anti-fraud solutions such as multi-factor authentication or device fingerprinting, she said.
The site had been active since 2018.
(Reporting by James Pearson and Michael Holden; writing by Raphael Satter; editing by Sandra Maler)
