Seized:SSNDOB

SSNDOB was an online marketplace that sold stolen Social Security numbers, birth dates and other personal information of U.S. citizens starting in 2012 until it was shut down in June 2022.

About

On the June 7, 2022, police in Cyprus seized SSNDOB's servers while the U.S. Department of Justice announced they had seized SSNDOB's domains. It was reported in 2013 SSNDOB was hacked using the domain ssndob.ru while offering consumers' credit reports US$15, drivers licenses for $4 and background reports for $12. A "full" record included the person's full name, address, phone number, date of birth and Social Security number cost 50 cents. Fulls could also be searched by date of birth for $1 and ZIP code for $1.50. Since April 2015, SSNDOB accepted payment in Bitcoin, receiving nearly $22 million until it was shutdown. SSNDOB transferred more than US$100,000 in Bitcoin to Joker's Stash, a darknet marketplace selling stolen personal information.

Arrest & Shutdown

Leading to it's shutdown the administrator was identified as vitalii Chychasov who, at the time of this being written is 37 years old. Vitalii was arrested in March 2022 while attempting to enter Hungary and extradited to the United States. The administrator didn't keep good opsec, tracking the Bitcoin transactions from purchases made on SSNDOB led the investigators to a HitBTC wallet that had received 989 Bitcoin between August 2017 and October 2021 which lead back to Chychasov. The HitBTC led investigators to an email "[email protected]" which was used to register the ssnob.ws domain on November 4, 2015. The investigators seized the marketplace's domains, including ssndob.ws, ssndob.vip, ssndob.club, and blackjob.biz on June 7, 2022.