British Hacker Charged for Operating “The Real Deal” Dark Web Marketplace

A 34-year-old U.K. national has been arraigned in the U.S. for
operating a dark web marketplace called The Real
Deal that specialized in the sales of hacking tools and
stolen login credentials.

Daniel Kaye^[1], who went by a litany of
pseudonyms Popopret, Bestbuy, UserL0ser, and Spdrman, has been
charged with five counts of access device fraud and one count of
money laundering conspiracy.

Kaye was indicted in April 2021, and subsequently consented to
his extradition from Cyprus to the U.S. in September 2022.

“While living overseas, this defendant allegedly operated an
illegal website that made hacking tools and login credentials
available for purchase, including those for U.S. government
agencies,” said^[2]
U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan.

Court documents show that The Real Deal^[3], until its shutdown in
2016, functioned as a market for illicit items, including stolen
account logins for U.S. government computers, bank accounts, and
social media platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn.

Also peddled through the portal were plundered credit card
information, personal data, botnets, hacking tools, illegal drugs,
and weapons which were listed for sale by vendors, who had their
own profile pages that offered an option to rank them.

Some of the U.S. government computers whose credentials were
allegedly sold by Kaye belong to the U.S. Postal Service, the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, and the U.S. Navy.

Kaye was previously arrested^[4]
by the U.K. law enforcement authorities in February 2017, and was
subsequently jailed for 32 months in January 2019 for attacking an
African phone company that knocked Liberia offline in 2016.

“[Kaye] ran a botnet using a modified Mirai variant which spread
via zero-day exploits,” security researcher Marcus Hutchins
noted^[5]
in a series of Tweets. “Some of the DDoS attacks we saw were
peaking at over 1 Tbps.”

Furthermore, the indictment accuses Kaye of conniving with one
or more persons going by the name “thedarkoverlord” to sell Social
Security numbers, not to mention launder the cryptocurrency
proceeds of the sale through mixing services like Bitmixer.io to
obscure the money trails.

“This case is an example of our persistent determination to work
with our international partners to hold criminals accountable no
matter how sophisticated their cyber fraud or their geographic
location,” said Keri Farley, Special Agent in Charge of FBI
Atlanta.