The National Police of Ukraine’s Cyber Police Division has announced the shutdown of nine services that were being used by hackers to exchange virtual assets obtained as ransom payments.
The operation, which was conducted in collaboration with the Main Police Investigation Department and the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, has been named “International.”
The blocked domain names were hosted on servers in the United States, some European countries, and Ukraine.
According to the police, the attackers used malware and encryption viruses to legitimize and launder crypto assets received from victims in exchange for unlocking their data.
The exchange of cryptocurrencies for fiat money was done anonymously, and advertisements for digital asset exchange services were published on closed hacker forums.
With the help of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), law enforcement agencies are currently identifying those involved in the criminal activity.
In the past, the National Police of Ukraine had exposed a group of individuals who had created a fraudulent network of fake investment cryptoservices, while in March of this year.
Binance began conducting training seminars for Ukrainian police officers to identify cases of cryptocurrency fraud.