Dutch Police Arrest Two Hackers Tied to “Fraud Family” Cybercrime Ring

Law enforcement authorities in the Netherlands have arrested two alleged individuals belonging to a Dutch cybercriminal collective who were involved in developing, selling, and renting sophisticated phishing frameworks to other threat actors in what’s known as a “Fraud-as-a-Service” operation.

The apprehended suspects, a 24-year-old software engineer and a 15-year-old boy, are said to have been the main developer and seller of the phishing frameworks that were employed to collect login data from bank customers. The attacks primarily singled out users in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Believed to be active since at least 2020, the cybercriminal syndicate has been codenamed “Fraud Family” by cybersecurity firm Group-IB. The frameworks come with phishing kits, tools designed to steal information, and web panels, which allow the fraudsters to interact with the actual phishing site in real time and retrieve the stolen user data.

“The phishing frameworks allow attackers with minimal skills to optimize the creation and design of phishing campaigns to carry out massive fraudulent operations all the while bypassing 2FA,” Group-IB Europe’s Roberto Martinez, senior threat intelligence…