Europol, l'agence européenne de police criminelle, a intensifié sa lutte contre les cybercriminels avec plusieurs opérations majeures depuis un an. Une manière de casser le mythe du « hacker inatteignable » pour le Général Lecouffe.

Le site des hackers russophones de Lockbit a été mise hors-ligne par les forces de l'ordre de plusieurs pays, dont la Gendarmerie nationale. Ces pirates sont responsables de plusieurs cyberattaques, dont celles contre l'hôpital de Corbeil-Essonnes, la Poste mobile et le département du Loiret.

Europol a interpellé cinq individus impliqués dans une série d'attaques par rançongiciels qui touchaient plus de 1.800 victimes à travers le monde. Une opération internationale de lutte contre la cybercriminalité qui s'est déroulée à Kyiv, en Ukraine.

Europol met fin à un gang de pirates adeptes des ransomwares

Les forces de police d'une dizaine de pays ont fait tomber la plateforme darknet d'un célèbre de groupe de cybercriminels. [Lire la suite]

Abonnez-vous aux newsletters Numerama pour recevoir l’essentiel de l’actualité https://www.numerama.com/newsletter/

Une opération menée par le FBI a fait fermer le site Genesis Market. Bien connu des hackers, le site était spécialisé dans la vente d'informations personnelles. [Lire la suite]

Abonnez-vous aux newsletters Numerama pour recevoir l’essentiel de l’actualité https://www.numerama.com/newsletter/

Europol a annoncé avoir fermé la plateforme de mixage de crypto-monnaies ChipMixer. Elle est accusée d'avoir participé au blanchiment de plusieurs milliards d'euros. [Lire la suite]

Abonnez-vous aux newsletters Numerama pour recevoir l’essentiel de l’actualité https://www.numerama.com/newsletter/

Europol, accompagné de la police allemande et ukrainienne, ont capturé deux membres d'un groupe ayant fait plus de 600 victimes, dont une douzaine en France. [Lire la suite]

Abonnez-vous aux newsletters Numerama pour recevoir l’essentiel de l’actualité https://www.numerama.com/newsletter/

In the wake of Italian police shutting down a 900,000 user pirate IPTV service last week, police in Spain have followed up with an operation of their own.

Information provided by Policía Nacional and EUROPOL does not include the service’s name but according to the numbers, the operation appears significant. The IPTV service had more than 500,000 subscribers all over Europe, serviced by a network of resellers.

Police say they disabled 10 administration panels connected to 32 servers located in France, the Netherlands and Spain. Those locations are reported as playing host to “illegal television content” and related computer equipment.

Packages bought by subscribers gave them access to 2,600 live TV channels plus a library of 23,000 movies and TV shows. An interesting factor is the reported age of the service – at least a decade of operations according to Spanish police.

Investigation Launched in 2020

The investigation began in 2020 following a complaint from the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment. Police say that they uncovered a network, operating through various companies, that had been fraudulently commercializing video content since 2012.

Websites were used to advertise and sell the illegal subscription packages and like many similar IPTV platforms working at scale, a network of resellers helped to cascade sales from the top-level service into the consumer market below. Police say that than 95 resellers represented the service in Spain, UK, Malta, Portugal, Cyprus, and Greece.

Big Service, Big Money

Numbers provided today by Policía Nacional will almost certainly change, if and when a case goes to trial, but by most standards they remain significant.

Annual profit – not revenue – is currently estimated at 3,000,000 million euros. Investigators say the money was laundered in Spain and elsewhere.

Through bank accounts held by companies in Spain, the suspects allegedly transferred money to bank accounts held by other companies under their control, located in unnamed paraísos fiscales , aka tax havens. Profits also funded luxury homes in the Malaga region of Spain and the formation of new companies to support criminal activity.

Arrests and Seizures

Police say they seized two high-end vehicles with an estimated value of 180,000 euros along with 2,800 euros in cash, IT-related materials, and other documentation. Eight bank accounts were frozen and four people were placed under arrest.

“The operation ended with four detainees in the Málaga municipalities of Benahavís (2), Mijas (one person arrested and another under investigation) and Benalmádena (1),” a police statement reads.

Efforts to identify more people involved in the organization continue in other countries.

Update: The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment played a key role in this investigation and has just provided new information regarding the IPTV service targeted.

The service worked under various brands including TV Choice Spain, Great TV Choice, and Best TV Choice. ACE reports that the services were promoted via real estate agencies, mainly in the coastal areas of Spain, and were actually shut down on October 19, 2022.

Authorities raided the main suspects’ residences in Marbella, shut down nine IPTV servers, and froze bank accounts containing 3 million euros.

“ACE is proud to support the effective actions taken by the Spanish National Police and Europol against this illegal IPTV piracy ring,” said Jan van Voorn, Executive Vice President and Chief of Global Content Protection for the Motion Picture Association and Head of ACE.

“We are honored to continue our work with law enforcement agencies and other partners around the world in our crucial fight to combat large-scale piracy operations and protect the creative marketplace.”

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

For stakeholders engaged in the perpetual fight against piracy, Europol’s IP Crime Conference offers networking opportunities by the truckload.

The 2022 event began Wednesday evening with a welcome reception in Rome, Italy. Thursday’s official opening ceremony began at 08:45 with a performance by the Guardia Di Finanza Fanfara, the official band of Itay’s financial police.

Given that the band’s GdF partners are responsible for taking down IPTV providers and sellers en masse , many in attendance would’ve appreciated the connections.

A Who’s Who of Anti-Piracy Groups

After two years of online meetings, this year’s event sees companies and industry groups fly in from all over the world, with entities fighting IPTV piracy represented comprehensively.

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment and their partners in the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance are both in attendance. And then there’s the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, Sky Italia, Eurojust, FAPAV, INTERPOL, Motion Picture Association, NAGRA Kudelski and Nordic Content Protection. Even U.S. Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Department of Justice made the trip.

The key themes of the conference are based on two questions: 1) How do we bring down criminal networks that are exploiting times of crisis to infringe IP Rights? 2) How can public-private partnership enhance the fight against IP Crime?

Public-private partnerships in IPR enforcement are nothing new but over the last few years, some rightsholder groups have become physically embedded inside government law enforcement agencies. The lines between civil and criminal enforcement are clear in law but much less obvious during investigations and on matters such as intelligence sharing, at least to outsiders.

The benefits of collaboration are obvious, however. The private sector has exceptional investigation tools, dedicated experts, and profit-driven motivation. On the other, law enforcement entities have superior access to restricted information and the not-insignificant power of arrest. When everything goes to plan, big things can follow.

Private-Public In Action

The Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA) is a company incorporated in the UK . Run by former policeman and current Irdeto cybersecurity expert Mark Mulready, AAPA represents the companies and groups listed below.

It’s clear why AAPA is considered one of pirate IPTV’s most significant rivals but when enforcement is escalated to the next level, government agencies have access to new sets of tools. There are numerous examples of this paying off but for AAPA, three events stand out in particular.

And the Winner Is…..

During the opening day of the conference, AAPA announced the winner of its 2022 award. It went to the Cybercrime Department of the Bulgarian Directorate Combating Organized Crime for its lead in implementing the EMPACT priority on intellectual property crime.

EMPACT – the European Multi-Disciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats – is the main mechanism for prioritizing threats and organizing an operational response in the EU. The 2022-2025 EMPACT cycle renders intellectual property crime an EU priority and with early recognition for Bulgaria’s cybercrime unit, the stage may have been set for new operations similar to these ( 1 , 2 , 3 ).

“The award was presented to Inspector Alexander Velev for his work in leading the operational action concerning illegal IPTV and illegal streaming in the framework of the EMPACT priority,” AAPA’s announcement reads.

“The effectiveness of collaborative working is clear to see and is evidenced by the fact that AAPA was invited to produce and deliver a 3 -day technical based training event which was hosted by the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior in Sofia,” says Sheila Cassells, Executive Vice President of AAPA.

Conference Co-Hosts Take Both ‘Highly Commended’ Awards

A pair of AAPA ‘highly commended’ awards were presented to Nucleo di Polizia Economico-Finanziaria della Guardia di Finanza di Milano and Squadra Reati Informatici della Procura della Repubblica presso il Tribunale Ordinario di Milano .

Featuring local and state police with support from the judiciary, these financial crime units are behind ‘The Net’, an anti-IPTV operation that began in December 2020 and claimed a number of high-profile victories before its completion in January 2022.

“We are delighted to recognise the continued commitment of the Italian police to fighting IP crime for a second year. The scale of the illegal network which was broken up as a result of THE NET is another successful blow against pirates,” Cassells says.

Those in attendance appear primed to deliver many more.

Image credit: Pixabay/ Quince Creative

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.