Ukrainian cyber police have arrested a 39-year-old man who is probably the author of uPanel, one of the most popular phishing kits on the black market.
The arrest of the developer of the malicious toolkit was the result of an international investigation.
ZDNet’s own sources claim that the phishing toolkit is called uPanel (aka U-Admin). Last year, researcher Fred HK described this phishing kit as follows:
Reporters write that uPanel used to be sold through a special site on the darknet and advertised on a popular hack forum, by a person known as kaktys1010. Based on old ads, the uPanel suite has been available for sale since 2015 for between $80 and $800, depending on the features that buyers wanted.
Ukrainian law enforcement officials report that after a search and seizure of computers, laptops and smartphones in the suspect’s house, the investigation identified more than 200 active uPanel clients.
A video published by Ukrainian officials with footage of the suspect’s arrest is available below:
Investigators say the suspect not only wrote and advertised the phishing kit, but spent a lot of time and effort providing technical support to his clients.
UPanel-sponsored phishing attacks targeted financial institutions in Australia, Spain, the United States, Italy, Chile, the Netherlands, Mexico, France, Switzerland, Germany and the United Kingdom. For example, 50% of all phishing attacks targeting Australian users in 2019 were managed using uPanel.
As we reported, last year the Ukrainian cyber police in cooperation with Binance detained operators of 20 cryptocurrency exchangers.
