“Operation Cookie Monster” Takes Down Major Marketplace for Stolen Logins

As part of “Operation Cookie Monster”, the FBI has seized Genesis Market, a major marketplace for stolen logins. The international campaign resulted in the arrest of approximately 120 people worldwide.

In a statement to engadget, the Justice Department said they took down a “key enabler” of ransomware. The operation included agencies from the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Poland. Europol and Eurojust were also involved in the bust.

Genesis Market, which was founded in 2018, sold logins, cookies, and browser fingerprints that were stolen from breached systems. As a results, hackers would have the ability to log in to accounts, and impersonate web browsers to access those accounts without needing a password or two-factor authentication to do it. As long as Genesis was able to access the victim’s device, it could offer up-to-the-minute data from the target.

Genesis has been linked to high-profile cybercrime incidents in the past, including the 2021 EA hack which resulted in hackers spending $10 for a bot that compromised a slack account at the company.

Law enforcement is ramping up their efforts to take down ransomware networks, and operation cookie monster is a direct result of that. Although this one instance won’t completely stop cybercriminals from accessing logins from other sources, it could make it a lot harder for bad actors to simply just buy the logins they need.

Story via engadget