The favorite VPN for cybercriminals and hackers has been shut down by the FBI, Europol, and various European police

The Safe-Inet service, a virtual private network used by cybercriminals from all over the world, was accessed and seized by the authorities during an international operation led by Europol.

This service has been in operation for more than a decade and has been used by "some of the world's biggest cyber criminals". In a statement, the European Union's police coordination agency, Europol, said on Tuesday that the VPN infrastructure in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, and the United States had been taken over in the wake of police actions led by the German city of Reutlingen.

The server hosting Safe-Inet has been "removed" by the European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats (EMPACT) and the now captured domain shows a home page set up by Europol to announce the destruction of the system after the police operation against cybercrime.

This VPN has been in operation for more than a decade and has hosted "some of the world's biggest cybercriminals" responsible for serious cybercrimes such as cyber-skimming (stealing payment information from the browser) and other ransomware operations.

The inaccessible VPN service now offers up to "five layers of anonymous connections" to its users, and presents itself as "one of the best tools available to prevent interception by law enforcement agencies", explains Europol.

The agency, which confirms that it is trying to locate some of these VPN users and take action against them in several countries, has been able to identify about 250 companies around the world that have been spied on by cybercriminals, through the Safe-Inet service.

This coordinated dismantling of this service was carried out within the framework of the European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats and with the support of the European Cybercrime Center of Europol, which was responsible for bringing together all countries involved in the process.

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