Over the past 15 years, a cybercrime anonymity service known as VIP72 has enabled countless fraudsters to mask their true location online by routing their traffic through millions of malware-infected systems. But roughly two weeks ago, VIP72’s online storefront — which ironically enough has remained at the same U.S.-based Internet address for more than a decade — simply vanished.
Like other anonymity networks marketed largely on cybercrime forums online, VIP72 routes its customers’ traffic through computers that have been hacked and seeded with malicious software. Using services like VIP72, customers can select network nodes in virtually any country, and relay their traffic while hiding behind some unwitting victim’s Internet address.
The domain Vip72[.]org was originally registered in 2006 to “Corpse,” the handle adopted by a Russian-speaking hacker who gained infamy several years prior for creating and selling an extremely sophisticated online banking trojan called A311 Death, a.k.a. “Haxdoor,” and “Nuclear Grabber.” Haxdoor was way ahead of its time in many respects, and it was used in multiple million-dollar cyberheists long before multi million-dollar cyberheists became daily front page news.
An ad circa 2005 for A311 Death, a powerful banking trojan authored by “Corpse,” the administrator of the early Russian hacking clique Prodexteam. Image: Google Translate via Archive.org.
Between 2003 and 2006, Corpse focused on selling and supporting his Haxdoor malware. Emerging in 2006, VIP72 was clearly one of his side hustles that turned into a reliable moneymaker for many years to come. And it stands to reason that VIP72 was launched with the help of systems already infected with Corpse’s trojan malware.
The first mention of VIP72 in the cybercrime underground came in 2006 whe ..
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