‘Genesis Market’ is an illegal personal information exchange that sells credentials, cookies, digital browser fingerprints, and hacking tools stolen from unsecured systems using automation bots and is the world’s largest illegal personal information exchange active since 2017. Over 1.5 million computers have been attacked, and 80 million pieces of data, including account access credentials, were stolen by the Genesis Market, which illegally sells all infrastructure and data to anonymous traders through the Dark Web.
In April, the European Police Union, led by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), conducted a large-scale operation named ‘Cookie Monster’ to arrest a suspect and seize the exchange domain. The process, which took place simultaneously in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, Canada, Germany, Poland, and Sweden, carried out about 200 searches worldwide, arrested more than 120 suspects, and uncovered back-end servers that led to the discovery of nearly 59,000 private user accounts. Although the actual Genesis Market Owner or Core Infrastructure presumed to be active in Russia or Russian-speaking regions was not found, its movement could not be confirmed for a while. It later shut down its domain and arrested several related suspects.
However, Genesis Market, suspended under such investigation, has recently found a new owner and moved to resume its activities. Recently, a post was made on the Russian hacking Dark Web ‘Exploit Forum,’ indicating that the ‘Genesis Store,’ the manager of the Genesis Market, was completed. Preparation of all the elements needed to operate the exchange, including the server infrastructure and database, will be completed next month, suggesting that Genesis Market will resume operations.
Illegal personal information exchanges, including Genesis Market, lower the entry barrier to hacking, becoming a critical factor in the rapid increase in cybercrime. Therefore, the security industry emphasizes that companies and individual users should be more vigilant about protecting their personal information as the Genesis Market is expected to resume activities.
On the other hand, threat expert Dmitry Smilyanets said, “The Genesis Market operators may be planning to bypass the pursuit of enforcement agencies and disguise themselves as a new organization.”
