In a significant crackdown on cybercrime on Wednesday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in collaboration with several international law enforcement agencies, seized two of the most well-known hacking and cybercrime forums, Nulled.to and Cracked.io.
These platforms have long been hubs for cybercriminal activities and are prominent for facilitating the distribution of stolen data, breached databases, hacking tools, compromised accounts, and illicit services.
Earlier yesterday, visitors to the Nulled.to and Cracked.io forums were greeted with a seizure notice from international law enforcement agencies stating that the forums were taken down as part of โOperation Talent.โ
โOperation Talent โ This website, as well as the information on the customers and victims of the website, has been seized by international law enforcement partners,โย reads the seizure notice on Nulled.to and Cracked.to.
โNow that everyone has more clarity on the situation,ย Cracked.ioย has been seized under operation talent with specific reasons being undisclosed. We are still waiting for the official court documentation from the data centre and the domain host. We will inform you guys further on those details once we have it. A sad day indeed for our community,โ the admins for Cracked[.]io teamย wroteย on Telegram while confirming the seizure of their forum.
Although the FBI has not disclosed the full details of its operations against Nulled.to and Cracked.io, Europolโone of the agencies listed on the seizure noticeโstated that an operation is underway and that further information will be released within the next 24 hours.
These domain seizures by law enforcement agencies represent a significant step in curbing the spread of cybercrime forums.
Additionally, Operation Talent took down three other domains: Mysellix[.]io and Sellix[.]io, which created, managed, and grew online stores for illicit goods, and Starkrdp[.]io, which offered customers access toย high-quality Windows and Linux virtual servers with the latest hardware and instant deployment.
All these domains also redirected their DNS records to FBI-controlled servers.