In the “Weekly Round-Up” we summarise and give extra reading suggestions for some of the past weeks financial crime news headlines, powered by Acuminor’s crime universe ThreatView® .
Operation Dark HunTor
We are moving over from an exciting October into November, and it has been a fun month. Firstly, to round up the past week and equally the cyber security month, I must touch upon the excellent international operation conducted in a joint effort from our global law enforcement agencies, with Operation Dark HunTOR.
The operation stems from the shutdown of the largest TOR marketplace earlier in January 2021 when a global effort shut down the hidden service “DarkMarket”.
To quote Europol (2021) on the results from Dark HunTOR: “More than €26.7 million (USD 31 million) in cash and virtual currencies have been seized in this operation, as well as 234 kg of drugs and 45 firearms. The seized drugs include 152 kg of amphetamine, 27 kg of opioids and over 25 000 ecstasy pills”.
Well done, and kudos to all involved! Read more about it below.
Europol – 150 arrested in dark web drug bust as police seize €26 million
FBI – With Overdose Deaths at a Historic High, FBI and Partners Target Online Drug Markets
It is, however important to highlight. Joint law enforcement operations has successfully brought down hidden services of the likes above since 2014, starting with Operation Onymous. Even if illicit marketplaces on TOR still exist, there has been a shift/displacement of illegal services to mobile/apps and social media platforms, showing that action is needed in other realms of the internet as well.
Acuminor PlayDay
Secondly, during this time of the year, we are in one of our busiest periods. To keep our spirits up and to foster our love for innovation, we inject a few days where all teams at Acuminor are invited to participate in our internal hackathon, called Acuminor PlayDay. The goal of this exercise is to explore, learn and have fun. The new ideas may or may not be relevant to our core business but will join new teams in problem-solving exercises and show our capabilities in creating excellent applications. Of course, some of the results are available in our offerings (and some we keep for ourselves). But dive into ThreatView , Risk assessment Professional or browse our Daily feed to see some of our creations. Until next time, have a great weekend from the PlayDay participants.
