Dutch police seize thousands of servers used for ransomware, child sex abuse footage
The Dutch police seized thousands of servers in The Hague and Zoetermeer, used solely for hosting criminal activities. According to the police, the hosting company rented space to criminals to carry out crimes like ransomware attacks, botnets, phishing, and the distribution of child sexual abuse images, the Oost-Nederland police said on Friday. No arrests have been made.
According to the police, the company has come up in 80 cybercrime investigations since 2022 and was active recently. “The hosting company is used solely to carry out criminal activities,” the police said. “It presents itself as bulletproof, advertising complete anonymity for users and suggesting it does not cooperate with law enforcement.”
During the operation on Wednesday, the police seized approximately 250 physical servers located in data centers in The Hague and Zoetermeer. The seizure of the physical servers also resulted in thousands of virtual servers being taken offline.
According ot the police, the seizure of the infrastructure allows for further investigation and also prevents the hosting company from being used for more crimes.
“Our first focus is to stop the criminal activities facilitated through this company. This will prevent new victimization in the short and long term, and disrupt the criminal process,” the police said.
The investigation is ongoing. “Given the large amount of seized data, analysis is currently the highest priority.”
On Thursday, the police reported taking down 83 servers and 20 domains in another investigation into facilitating cybercrime. This international operation, called Endgame, was coordinated by Europol and Eurojust.
