SSNDOB, an online marketplace that sold personal information of some 24 million Americans, has been shut down following law enforcement operations conducted by the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Justice, and the Cyprus Police.
“A series of websites that operated for years and were used to sell personal information, including the names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers belonging to individuals in the United States. The SSNDOB Marketplace has listed the personal information for approximately 24 million individuals in the United States, generating more than $19 million USD in sales revenue,” explains a press release by the Department of Justice.
While the website also contained personal information of people from the UK, it was mainly a marketplace where the personal information of US citizens are sold for as low as $0.50.
The SSNDOB site had multiple sites acting as mirrors of each other in order to avoid DDoS attacks or evade law enforcement operations. It enabled cybercriminals to buy “Social Security number, date of birth and full info of people” via bitcoin.
Cybersecurity firm Advanced Intel said that much of the collected data was stolen from healthcare and hospital data breaches. Threat actors then performed financial fraud with the personal information that they stole.
Meanwhile, blockchain analysis company Chainalysis said that they were able to trace $22 million in Bitcoin being paid to SSNDOB beginning April 2015.
Incidentally, Chainalysis also discovered a connection between SSNDOB and the defunct Joker’s Stash, which ceased operations in January 2021.
“Between December 2018 and June 2019, SSNDOB sent over $100,000 worth of Bitcoin to Joker’s Stash, suggesting the two markets may have had some relationship to one another, including possibly shared ownership,” said researchers from Chainalysis.
For more information, read the original story in Bleepingcomputer.