Police Shut Down VPN Service Used by Hackers

A multi-national police operation has led to the takedown of a VPN service used by cybercriminals to distribute ransomware, among other illegal activities.

Joint efforts on part of Europol, the US FBI, the United Kingdom's National Crime Agency, and the police department of the German city of Hanover led to the shutdown of the VPN company's servers and infrastructure.

Hackers Found Save Haven in Double VPN

The VPN in question is called VPNLab dot net and according to Europol, the VPN has been used many times by criminals to attack businesses and organizations and to distribute various types of malware, including ransomware.

The VPNLab service has been around for over a decade and used to offer very attractive pricing as well as double VPN, rerouting traffic through not just one but two different VPN servers. All of this would cost as little as $60 for a full year. Naturally, the low price of entry and the additional data encryption offered by the double VPN functionality made the service a great choice for hackers and malware threat actors.

Now that the servers used by VPNLab have been seized and taken offline, law enforcement is working to pick apart the victims and threat actors among the service's customers. According to Europol, as many as 100 different businesses and organizations were found "at risk".

Series of Police Operations Shuts Down Malware Operations

The VPNLab main website has been replaced with a notification from international police authorities, informing that infrastructure has been seized and the customer records kept by VPNLab are being investigated.

This takedown took place just a couple of days after Russian authorities, urged by US administration, took down the infamous REvil ransomware gang, arresting REvil members and seizing assets worth millions of dollars, including over a dozen luxury vehicles owned by the cybercriminals.