Europol, the US Department of Justice, and Britain’s National Crime Agency have joined forces to take down a Russian-language VPN service since it is believed to be used by criminals.
<p>This is an excellent example of international collaboration to fight the growing hydra of cybercrime. Even if there are no logs, cache and temporary log files can certainly bring some interesting evidence for law enforcement. Sometimes incriminating artefacts can also be extracted from on-prem or cloud backups. Nonetheless, the seizure is unlikely to lead to arrests, as experienced cybercriminals commonly use a chain of double-VPNs combined with other intermediary hosts to deeply hide their location.</p> <p> </p> <p>Furthermore, many of the wrongdoers are often located in foreign jurisdictions that do not extradite their citizens or flatly refuse any cooperation with the Western judicial system. Another problem is that cybercriminals swiftly adapt to new conditions, and we will likely see a new anonymous VPN service emerge within the next few weeks. Worse, the new service will probably consider potential mistakes and omissions of its predecessor and create a more resilient and bullet-proof infrastructure that will be much harder to trace and take down.</p>
<p>This is an excellent example of international collaboration to fight the growing hydra of cybercrime. Even if there are no logs, cache and temporary log files can certainly bring some interesting evidence for law enforcement. Sometimes incriminating artefacts can also be extracted from on-prem or cloud backups. Nonetheless, the seizure is unlikely to lead to arrests, as experienced cybercriminals commonly use a chain of double-VPNs combined with other intermediary hosts to deeply hide their location.</p> <p> </p> <p>Furthermore, many of the wrongdoers are often located in foreign jurisdictions that do not extradite their citizens or flatly refuse any cooperation with the Western judicial system. Another problem is that cybercriminals swiftly adapt to new conditions, and we will likely see a new anonymous VPN service emerge within the next few weeks. Worse, the new service will probably consider potential mistakes and omissions of its predecessor and create a more resilient and bullet-proof infrastructure that will be much harder to trace and take down.</p>