xDedic was a Ukrainian-language

crime forum A crime forum is a generic term for an Internet forum specialising in computer crime and Internet fraud activities such as hacking, Online Identity Theft, Phishing, Pharming, Malware Attacks or spamming. During the early days of the Internet publi ...

, RDP shop and marketplace.

History

Founded some time in 2014, it was revealed in June 2016

Kaspersky Lab Kaspersky Lab (; Russian: Лаборатория Касперского, tr. ''Laboratoriya Kasperskogo'') is a Russian multinational cybersecurity and anti-virus provider headquartered in Moscow, Russia, and operated by a holding company in ...

report as being a major hub in the trade of compromised servers. As of May 2016, 70,624 servers were offered for sale. Following this report, the site shut down only to quickly re-emerge on the Tor dark web.

Services

The compromised servers were focused on the areas of

online gambling Online gambling is any kind of gambling conducted on the internet. This includes virtual poker, casinos and sports betting. The first online gambling venue opened to the general public was ticketing for the Liechtenstein International Lottery in ...

ecommerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manage ...

bank A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets. Beca ...

s and

payment processor A payment processor is a system that enables financial transactions, commonly employed by a merchant, to handle transactions with customers from various channels such as credit cards and debit cards or bank accounts. They are usually broken down ...

online dating Online dating, also known as Internet dating, Virtual dating, or Mobile app dating, is a relatively recent method used by people with a goal of searching for and interacting with potential romantic or sexual partners, via the internet. An onlin ...

advertising network An online advertising network or ad network is a company that connects advertisers to websites that want to host advertisements. The key function of an ad network is an aggregation of ad supply from publishers and matching it with advertiser's d ...

s, ISP services,

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mea ...

service providers,

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used ...

and instant messenger services. Various

crimeware Crimeware is a class of malware designed specifically to automate cybercrime. Crimeware (as distinct from spyware and adware) is designed to perpetrate identity theft through social engineering or technical stealth in order to access a compute ...

products were for sale. The site featured a partner portal for the secure and verified listing of compromised data and standardised backdoor to be used.

Shut down

In January 2019, American and Belgian authorities working with Europol, Eurojust and Ukraine shut down xDedic, raiding sites and seizing the domain. As of January 2020 the

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...

are asking victims of machine take overs to come forward. In November 2022, a Moldovan site administrator was extradited from the Canary Islands, Spain to the United States.

References

Hacker groups Crime forums Cybercrime Dark web Tor onion services {{crime-stub