Dutch police take down international criminal VPN

The Dutch police have taken down a criminal VPN service called DoubleVPN with an international team.

If you have ever used DoubleVPN, there is a good chance that the Dutch police have been watching. Led by our own enforcers, an international team of agents has taken the VPN service offline. Not only would criminals have made massive use of the service. According to the police, the company itself is also a criminal organization.

Dutch police roll up DoubleVPN

The virtual private network is suspected of money laundering. They would also be complicit in all sorts of criminal activities perpetrated by users. “Think of hacking, selling and/or distributing malware, such as ransomware and selling the data that DoubleVPN customers got through hacking,” the police said.

While DoubleVPN wasn’t necessarily a well-known service, it would have been a massive player in the underworld. It is not for nothing that the Dutch police (Team High Tech Crime (THTC) of the National Unit, National Criminal Investigation Service) worked together with Germany, the United States, Canada and even Europol. Hackers from the crime fighters managed to break into the VPN’s network.

The service cost at least €22 per month, according to the police. Buyers, especially perpetrators of phishing and ransomware attacks, could thus indirectly reach their victims. After all, a VPN redirects a user’s internet connection. DoubleVPN offered up to four layers of deep VPN connections. In theory, your IP address can hardly be traced that way.

Hardly, but it turns out that it is possible. Incidentally, the team of international police officers was not after the cyber criminals who used DoubleVPN for malicious activities. Instead, the network has been taken offline. According to the police, it is a message to criminals that there is no ‘safe harbor’.