The Federal Bureau of Investigation, working along with Europol and other European authorities in Belgium and Ukraine, shut down the notorious Xdedic marketplace.
Since 2014, the criminal facility provided access to tens of thousands of compromised servers of companies and private individuals that were hacked via the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).
Criminal buyers and sellers traded such RDP servers on the xDedic marketplace, for as little as $6 dollars to more than $10,000 dollars per credential.
According to an announcement by the European Union’s Judicial Cooperation Unit, Eurojust:
“Through their coordinated efforts, Belgian, Ukrainian and American judicial, prosecutorial and police authorities struck a devastating blow against the online marketplace for the illegal trade of hacked computer systems. An important signal was also sent to the perpetrators of other online criminal activities, including on the darkweb, that they are not immune from criminal investigation and prosecution. The approach to the xDedic marketplace demonstrates the importance of intensive international cooperation in the fight against organised crime on the dark web.”
On the xDedic web site, xdedic.biz, the following message appears:
In recent weeks, the FBI has shut down other illegal networks, such as a group of online brothels with 498 domains, and a peddler of counterfeit and pirate movies.
