Russia Steps Up its Crackdown on Cybercrime

At the beginning of February, Russian law enforcement operations seized and shut down four popular dark web marketplaces that specialize in the theft and trade of stolen credit cards.

The four markets, Ferum Shop, Sky-Fraud, Trump’s Dumps, and UAS, are said to have made over $263 million in cryptocurrency. All sites were crawled by Webz.io with close to a million posts in the cyber API.

This is only the latest of the recent clamp down on cybercriminals by law enforcement forces. In the last few months, we have witnessed two high-profile operations that led to the arrest of 14 members of the REvil ransomware group in Russia, responsible for numerous cyberattacks worldwide, and the shutdown of Canadian HeadQuarters (aka CanadianHQ), a darknet marketplace that offered spam services, phishing kits, stolen credential dumps and more.

How many dark Web credit card marketplaces are out there?

Stolen credit card information can come in many shapes, forms and places on the dark web. We can find them on chatting applications such as ICQ and Telegram, on carding forums, paste sites and others. However, none of them compares to the amount and diversity of stolen credit cards that exist in credit card stores and the volume of profits they make. Such credit card marketplaces upload thousands of new credit cards for sale everyday.

Unlike dark web marketplaces for illegal trafficking of drugs and weapons (such as CanadianHQ), who operate on the TOR network exclusively, credit card shops are relatively more accessible because they operate both on the dark and on the open web. Yet, recently we are witnessing more and more credit card stores that have gone beyond a paywall. Unlike classic dark web marketplaces which usually do not restrict their access to paying users.

The stolen credit cards are selling at low prices in those stores, no more than dozens of dollars per card, usually less than $20.

The products are listed in tables (see an example below) and include the card’s BIN (Bank Identification Number), country and other entities belonging to the original credit card owner and issuer. The buyers can use the card and pass some of the security measures taken to ensure the cards are valid such as the owner’s personal details like billing address.

Webz.io crawls dozens of different credit card marketplaces including popular stores, such as RealAndRare and brianscc club. Last year, we started covering a credit card store called ALL WORLD Cards, which we flagged as one of the rising top credit card stores. Today, ALL WORLD Cards offers millions of credit cards for sale.