#europol
4 cases
Operation KillSwitch seized KillSec's leak site and five servers on 30 September 2026, securing 110 TB of stolen data. A 16-year-old is the alleged main operator; a Dutch national is indicted in Puerto Rico. What the primary sources say, and where the numbers diverge.
On May 19-20, 2026, Europol and Eurojust's Operation Saffron took down First VPN — a bulletproof service running since 2014 and used by 25+ ransomware groups. Investigators infiltrated it, seized 33+ servers and unmasked ~506 users. The Ukrainian admin was searched and interviewed, not arrested.
On 31 August 2026 investigators cut a 23-year-old peer-to-peer botnet off from its operator by poisoning the peer lists of its own bots. The protocol they exploited had been documented publicly since 2011 and could never be patched.
A market that took only Monero ran for five years and €330 million. The playbook that broke Silk Road and AlphaBay did not apply — and the authorities who dismantled it have not said what did.