Europol says First VPN, a Russian-speaking cybercrime VPN service, has been dismantled in an international operation led by France and the Netherlands. The agency described it as infrastructure used to conceal ransomware attacks and data theft, with support from Europol and Eurojust during the takedown [1].
This was not a normal privacy VPN caught in a policy dispute. First VPN was promoted on Russian-language cybercrime forums as a way to stay beyond law enforcement reach. Bitdefender, which supported the operation, says investigators dismantled 33 servers, seized the primary domains 1vpns.com, 1vpns.net, and 1vpns.org, and arrested the service administrator in Ukraine [2].
The most useful detail is what investigators obtained after access to the service. Bitdefender says French and Dutch investigators identified VPN connections tied to ransomware, large-scale fraud, and data theft. Europol then distributed 83 intelligence packages, while information linked to 506 users moved to participating jurisdictions.
Why a VPN takedown matters to defenders
A criminal VPN is not only an IP-hiding layer. It can become the repeatable access path attackers use while testing stolen credentials, managing extortion portals, or returning to a victim network after the first intrusion. That means a takedown can expose more than domains and servers; it can connect old incidents that looked unrelated.
The practical lesson is to treat suspicious VPN and proxy infrastructure as part of the attack trail, not just as background noise in logs. Look for repeated access from the same anonymization ranges around failed logins, unusual admin actions, or data staging. For the basic distinction between privacy tools and routing layers, see our explainer on VPN, proxy, and Tor differences.
The source pages contain official hero graphics for the operation, but they are title-card images rather than evidence screenshots. They do not add victim-facing artifacts or technical indicators, so the article uses them only as references instead of embedding them as body figures.
References
- Europol, “Cybercriminal VPN used by ransomware actors dismantled in global crackdown,” published May 21, 2026. Press release
- Bitdefender Business Insights, “Operation Saffron: Bitdefender Joins ‘First VPN’ Takedown,” May 21, 2026. Report
