The US has shut down Rydox, a cybercriminal marketplace that had been selling to hackers since 2016.
On Thursday, the Justice Department announced it had seized the Rydox website, which operated on the open web at www.rydox[.]cc through servers based in Malaysia. The site has since been replaced with a banner declaring that international law enforcement has taken over the property.
Three Kosovo nationals have been arrested for allegedly administrating the marketplace. According to an unsealed indictment, Rydox sold a variety of cybercriminal products, including spamming tools, people’s stolen personal information and looted credit card numbers and login information.
The seizure notice over the Rydox site. (FBI)
The site operated as a marketplace for authorized merchants, who paid a fee to sell their cybercriminal products over Rydox. Merchants also agreed to pay Rydox a 40% cut of all sales. “According to the indictment, the Rydox marketplace has conducted over 7,600 sales of personally identifiable information (PII), stolen access devices, and cybercrime tools, which generated at least $230,000 in revenue,” the Justice Department added.
The site also offered 321,372 cybercrime products to more than 18,000 cybercriminal buyers, including stolen personal details from US residents. To crack down, the indictment notes an undercover source with the FBI registered to use Rydox back in 2022. At times, one of the operators of Rydox also used Facebook Messenger to communicate with an unnamed co-conspirator.
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Two of the alleged administrators to Rydox, 26-year-old Ardit Kutleshi and 28-year-old Jetmir Kutleshi have since been arrested in Kosovo and face extradition to the US. A third suspect, Shpend Sokoli was nabbed in Albania and is expected to be charged and prosecuted in the country, the Justice Department said.
According to the indictment, Ardit and Jetmir Kutleshi had been operating the site since 2016. They now face a maximum penalty of over 30 years in prison if convicted of all charges, which include money laundering, identity theft and hacking-related offenses.
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About Michael Kan
Senior Reporter
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