BestBuy hacker called to court for operating a dark web market

A British male, well-known as the BestBuy hacker, was called by the U.S. DOJ to attend a hearing last week regarding an illegal operation of a dark web marketplace. Based on reports, the accused is named Daniel Kaye, known by several aliases like Poppet, UserL0ser, and Spdrman.

The 34-year-old defender was allegedly the head of an underground market called the ‘Real Deal’ for over a year. Numerous malicious entities have used his platform to sell stolen credentials, especially U.S. government-owned information. Threat groups also used the market to sell and trade drugs, weapons, and hacking tools.

Furthermore, the U.S. government stated that some available court documents for sale are credentials belonging to different sectors of their country. Most of these stolen documents came from the U.S. Navy, the NOAA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the USPS, and NASA.

 

The BestBuy hacker has also partnered with another notorious threat actor.

 

Daniel Kaye, the BestBuy hacker, has also trafficked LinkedIn and Twitter accounts and conspired with a well-known threat actor dubbed TheDarkOverlord. Their partnership allegedly distributed stolen Social Security numbers to another threat group by selling them for a hefty price.

In addition, the defendant laundered the cryptocurrency he acquired while being the head of the Real Deal marketplace via Bitmixer[.]io. Bitmixer was a Bitcoin mixer service that hid the ill-gotten gains from the government-owned blockchain tracing analysis efforts.

Daniel Kaye rose to prominence by being the developer and seller of the GovRAT malware, which many threat groups used to infiltrate and hack numerous U.S. government agencies.

He also hijacked and unintentionally shut down nearly a million routers on Deutsche Telekom’s network in 2016 through a flawed Mirai botnet malware strain. The adversaries used the telecommunication firm to boost its DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) botnet’s capabilities after being recruited by a Liberian ISP to compromise its competitors.

According to the DOJ’s announcement, Daniel Kaye was out of the country when the indictment was filed against him. The defendant consented to its extradition from Cyprus to the United States last month.