In a coordinated multinational law enforcement operation, a VPN service called DoubleVPN that provides a safe haven for hackers to hide their footprints was shut down.
The law enforcement authorities noted in a seizure notice on the now-defunct site that DoubleVPN was taken down on June 29, 2021.
Law authorities gained access to DoubleVPN’s servers and obtained personal information, logs, and statistics about all of its clients.
The owners of DoubleVPN failed to deliver on their promises.
“On 29th of June 2021, law enforcement took down DoubleVPN,” the agencies said in a seizure notice splashed on the now-defunct site.
“Law enforcement gained access to the servers of DoubleVPN and seized personal information, logs and statistics kept by DoubleVPN about all of its customers.
DoubleVPN’s owners failed to provide the services they promised.”
The criminal investigation was carried out by agencies from Bulgaria, Canada, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States, in collaboration with Eurojust and the European Cybercrime Centre of Europol (EC3).
To hide the location and identity of ransomware operators and phishing fraudsters, DoubleVPN was aggressively pushed on both Russian and English-speaking underground cybercrime forums.
They offer advanced levels of anonymity to their clients by providing single, double, triple, and even quadruple VPN connections, in which internet traffic is routed through two or more VPN servers while being encrypted multiple times.
The cheapest VPN connection was just for $25 per month.
DoubleVPN claimed on their website (before it was taken down) that they do not spy on their customers and do not log client activity on their servers.
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