Feds shutter online malware market Darkode

PITTSBURGH – The Justice Department shut down an online “criminal bazaar” where computer hackers bought and sold stolen databases, malicious software and other products that could cripple or steal information from computers and cellphones, authorities said Wednesday.

Roughly 70 alleged cybercriminals in the United States and 19 other countries were targeted in the 18-month probe of Darkode.com. The secretive, members-only site was the largest-known English language malware forum in the world until the FBI got a court order to shut it down, investigators said.

“We have dismantled a cyber-hornets’ nest of criminal hackers which was believed by many to be impenetrable,” U.S. Attorney David Hickton said.

Twelve people have been charged in the United States by federal prosecutors in Pittsburgh, Wisconsin, Louisiana and the District of Columbia, including Daniel Placek, 27, of Glendale, Wisconsin, and Matjaz Skorjanc, of Maribor, Slovenia.

They allegedly created Darkode in 2007 “for the purpose of bringing together the most talented computer hackers and cybercriminals on the Internet,” court documents said.

Skorjanc is jailed in Slovenia and must be brought to Pittsburgh to face charges including racketeering conspiracy and wire, bank and computer fraud.

Placek, charged with conspiracy to commit computer fraud, will surrender once a federal judge in Pittsburgh orders him to appear. His attorney didn’t immediately return a call.

Twenty-eight others have been arrested by foreign authorities.

Roughly 30 more are the targets of search warrants, which are necessary because some countries require evidence to be seized before criminal charges can be brought. In other cases, computers must be searched so investigators can connect online personas with real people.

The number of victims and the amount of their losses can’t readily be calculated, Hickton said. John Lynch, the chief of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, estimated it at hundreds of millions of dollars.

Rob Wainwright, director of the European Union’s law enforcement agency, Europol, said shutting down Darkode significantly disrupted the underground economy. He called it “a stark reminder that private forums are no sanctuary for criminals.”

One 20-year-old Pittsburgh man is charged with designing Dendroid, a piece of malware that lets someone remotely control infected Android cellphones. Information from those phones could be stolen and the phones themselves used to take pictures and videos, make calls and send text messages without the owner’s knowledge.

Dendroid was sold for as much as $65,000 to outsiders, but for $300 to other Darkode members.