Group-IB, a leading creator of cybersecurity technologies to investigate, prevent, and fight digital crime, is proud to be announced the winner of the 2023 Benelux Outstanding Security Performance Award (OSPA) for Outstanding Police/Law Enforcement Initiative. This milestone prize was awarded to Group-IB’s Europe-based High-Tech Crime Investigations team for their continued efforts in cross-border operations alongside Europol and national law enforcement agencies to crack down on the dark web trade of compromised credit card data.
The award was presented to Dmitry Tunkin, Group-IB’s Chief Regional Officer, Europe, during a ceremony held in the Dutch city of Breda on October 4, 2023, and recognizes Group-IB’s long-standing cooperation with law enforcement agencies on the European continent, in line with the company’s zero-tolerance policy to cybercrime.
Figure 1. Group-IB’s Chief Regional Officer, Europe Dmitry Tunkin receives the award at the Benelux OSPA Awards
Group-IB Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst Martijn van den Berk was also in the spotlight, having been nominated as a finalist for the Outstanding Young Security Professional honour after his diligent coordination with international law enforcement during investigations into multiple banking Trojans and phishing kits, and his victory in the Politie Hackathon 2022, organized by the Dutch Police, where he helped to solve a real cold case and identified a potential criminal.
“Group-IB is proud to be recognized by the organization committee of the Benelux OSPAs for its key role in Europol-led efforts to clamp down on traders of stolen credit cards. Fighting against cybercrime is at the heart of all we do at Group-IB, and as a result, strong cooperation with international and national law enforcement agencies continues to guide our strategy. We look forward to the latest iteration of Carding Action, expected to go live later this year.”
Group-IB’s Chief Regional Officer, Europe
Carding Action 2020 and Carding Action 2021, both led by Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) and with the support of national law enforcement agencies in EU member states and the United Kingdom, and Group-IB, were coordinated multinational operations aimed at combating the online trade of compromised credit card credentials. These two successful operations roughly prevented a combined total of €54 million in losses.
Throughout both Carding Action operations, Group-IB’s Threat Intelligence and High-Tech Crime Investigations teams combined to identify, extract, and analyze information about freshly compromised payment records from European financial institutions. Proprietary sources were used to collect this data, including botnet and JS-sniffer infrastructure, as well as dark web credit card shops and marketplaces monitored by Group-IB’s advanced solutions.
Over the past year, Group-IB’s Europe-based High-Tech Cybercrime Investigations team also played a key role in the recent INTERPOL-led Operation Nervone, aimed at disrupting the activity of OPERA1ER (also known as NXSMS, DESKTOP-Group, and Common Raven as named by SWIFT ISAC), a French-speaking financially-motivated cybercrime syndicate believed to have stolen at least $11 million during attacks on banks, financial services firms, and telecommunications companies.
After tracking OPERA1ER since 2019, Group-IB alongside the Orange CERT Coordination Center (Orange-CERT-CC) provided timely intelligence that revealed the identity and potential location of a key member of the cybercriminal group. This information was used to detain a suspect in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire in the summer of 2023.
