The Dutch Nationwide Police, together with worldwide companions, have introduced the disruption of the infrastructure powering two info stealers tracked as RedLine and MetaStealer.
The takedown, which came about on October 28, 2024, is the results of a global legislation enforcement activity pressure codenamed Operation Magnus that concerned authorities from the U.S., the U.Ok., Belgium, Portugal, and Australia.
Eurojust, in a assertion printed at this time, mentioned the operation led to the shut down of three servers within the Netherlands and the confiscation of two domains. In whole, over 1,200 servers in dozens of nations are estimated to have been used to run the malware.
As a part of the efforts, one administrator has been charged by the U.S. authorities and two individuals have been arrested by the Belgian police, the Politie mentioned, including certainly one of them has since been launched, whereas the opposite stays in custody.
The U.S. Division of Justice (DoJ) has charged Maxim Rudometov, one of many RedLine Stealer’s builders and directors, with entry machine fraud, conspiracy to commit pc intrusion, and cash laundering. If convicted, he faces a most penalty of 35 years in jail.
“Rudometov repeatedly accessed and managed the infrastructure of RedLine Infostealer, was related to varied cryptocurrency accounts used to obtain and launder funds and was in possession of RedLine malware,” the DoJ mentioned.
Investigation into the technical infrastructure of the knowledge stealers started a yr in the past based mostly on a tip from cybersecurity firm ESET that the servers are situated within the Netherlands.
Among the many knowledge seized included usernames, passwords, IP addresses, timestamps, registration dates, and the supply code of each the stealer malware. In tandem, a number of Telegram accounts related to the stealer malware have been taken offline. Additional investigation into their clients is ongoing.
“The infostealers RedLine and MetaStealer have been provided to clients through these teams,” Dutch legislation enforcement officers mentioned. “Till lately, Telegram was a service the place criminals felt untouchable and nameless. This motion has proven that that is not the case.”
It is value noting that the MetaStealer goal as a part of Operation Magnus is totally different from the MetaStealer malware that is recognized to focus on macOS units.
Info stealers equivalent to RedLine and MetaStealer are essential cogs within the cybercrime wheel, permitting risk actors to siphon credentials and different delicate info that might then be offered off to different risk actors for follow-on assaults like ransomware.
Stealers are sometimes distributed below a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) mannequin, which means the core builders hire entry to the instruments to different cybercriminals both on a subscription foundation or for a lifetime license.