Interpol has dismantled the 16shop phishing-as-a-service platform following a law enforcement operation that resulted in the arrest of its Indonesian operator, as well as two other individuals, according to The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.
More than 70,000 users across 43 countries have availed hacking tools by 16shop that have been peddled in various cybercrime forums for nearly six years, while the PaaS platform's phishing kits have been leveraged to facilitate the creation of over 150,000 phishing domains, a report from Group-IB showed. U.S., France, Germany, Japan, Thailand, and the U.K. were most targeted by threat actors leveraging 16shop, which was found to have its servers hosted by a U.S.-based company.
Both Group-IB and Interpol emphasized the threat of phishing-as-a-service tools, with the latter noting that such services enable automated cyberattacks that could be easily launched by less sophisticated cybercriminals and threat actors.