United States law enforcement agencies have seized the primary domain of Virtualine, a bulletproof hosting provider known for facilitating various cybercriminal activities, based on information published by Bleeping Computer.
The Department of Justice confirmed that Virtualine marketed services specifically designed to support illegal operations, including phishing, carding, spamming and port scanning. The service, which also operated under aliases such as Secury and Massgod, promised to protect clients from legal scrutiny. The Federal Bureau of Investigation led the seizure of the virtualine.net domain with assistance from international partners in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Authorities allege that the provider knowingly hosted forums containing child abuse material and ignored multiple takedown requests. Beyond hosting illegal content, Virtualine facilitated money laundering by accepting direct Bitcoin payments from ransomware operators and illicit marketplaces. Blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs reported that a Russian drug marketplace accounted for 44% of the service's financial inflows, while ransomware groups contributed 5%. Dutch police seized dozens of physical servers and recovered data from over 3,000 customers, initiating further investigations. Although the provider remains partially active, network visibility has dropped significantly, suggesting that much of the underlying infrastructure is no longer reachable.
Source: Bleeping Computer
