Darknet researchers find a user who cheated hackers out of $ 132,000

A team of Sophos researchers came across a fake website called Genesis Market. Genesis Market is a darknet marketplace that offers hackers to buy credentials, cookies, and exploits for various web platforms to conduct cyberattacks.

According to experts, the fake site requires users to pay $ 100 to create an account, while the real site works only by invitation. After collecting the bits of information left by the attacker, the experts found other fake sites that work according to the same scheme. From August 2021 to June 2022, analysts managed to identify about 20 similar sites.

Apparently, this scam was quite successful: the site owner’s crypto wallets contained more than $ 132,000, most of which the attacker has already withdrawn.

Researchers believe they have managed to find the person responsible for this — a user of the Dread darknet marketplace under the nickname waltcranston. This nickname combines the names of the protagonist of the Breaking Bad series Walter White and the actor who plays him, Bryan Cranston.