A new identity theft service launched on the dark web this week is selling digital scans of more than 153 million drivers licenses from people in the United States and Canada. Based on interviews with individuals whose licenses are available for purchase on this service, it appears to be siphoning images collected by a widely-used identity verification company based in Louisiana. KrebsOnSecurity also has learned that the New Orleans field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) today launched an official inquiry into the source of the images.

A record available at this identity theft service that includes the drivers license for U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, one of several high-ranking U.S. government officials whose drivers licenses can be found for sale.

On Monday, Aug. 31, a source alerted KrebsOnSecurity to a service advertised by a new user on the Russian cybercrime forum Exploit, offering access to digital scans of identity documents on more than 170 million people in North America. The source brought it to my attention because the proprietor of this identity theft service offered my Virginia drivers license as a free sample in their initial sales thread on Exploit.

The service, dubbed Nexus, claims to have more than 153 million drivers licenses for people in the United States and Canada, as well as more than 10 million identification cards; more than three million travel documents and/or international IDs; and at least 579,000 medical cards.

A quick look around Nexus finds they are likely not exaggerating about that 153 million number: Running a blank search in Nexus (with no search parameters entered) returns approximately 11.5 million pages of results, with roughly 15 results displayed per page. It includes documents from people in both Canada and the United States, but the bulk of these records are on Americans: searching for just Canadian drivers licenses returns approximately 1.1 million results, with the largest concentration from Ontario (473,673 records).

Curiously, the identity records include not only drivers licenses but also marijuana dispensary cards. Some of the records list their “source” as “CDL,” presumably short for “commercial drivers license.” Other records carry the source notation of “CAC,” which may refer to Common Access Cards, government issued identity cards that grant physical access to government buildings and secure rooms.

The people behind Nexus claim the license images are coming from an active breach at “a major identity verification company” whose customers include multiple Fortune 500 companies.

The record totals listed by the Nexus identity theft service. The number of drivers license records increased by nearly 400,000 in the span of just 24 hours.

“We have been continuously exfiltrating new data for over a year into our private database,” the service enthused in its introductory post on Exploit. “Records are available to preview before purchase with pertinent information redacted. Customer photos are displayed if available.”

Indeed, over the past 24 hours, the number of drivers license records listed as available in Nexus has increased by nearly 400,000, suggesting that freshly stolen license data is being harvested and uploaded to this service on a semi-regular basis.

The record featuring my drivers license includes six image files: three pairs of photos of the license’s front and back, a basic image scan, as well as infrared and ultraviolet versions of the same images. A date and timestamp is appended to each image file, and the timestamp on my license scan corresponds to a date in June 2025 when I took a flight to the midwest United States to attend a family funeral.

Some of the 153 million+ license scans — including mine — feature six image files with date and timestamps appended to the filenames. Not all records include photos, and some that do feature photos do not display the associated filenames.

Intent on discovering the source of this data, KrebsOnSecurity asked more than a dozen friends and family members for permission to search for their licenses in this service. Each person whose license could be found (nine of them) confirmed having traveled on or very close to the dates in the timestamps attached to their images. It is unclear what timezone these timestamps are in, but from reviewing car rental records shared by several people who helped with this research, it appears the timezone is set to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

At first, I thought the source of the data might have something to do with airports. However, that theory went out the window when it became apparent there were no passports in this data set. Also, only some of those who helped with this research said they showed their drivers license at the airport on the day of their travel. One person whose license was in Nexus hadn’t flown at all recently, but was renting a car from Hertz for several months around the date of their timestamp.

Two of those who agreed to help are federal employees who said they shared other forms of government identification when passing through airport security. However, those individuals each said they shared their state-issued drivers licenses later that day when renting vehicles at their respective destinations, and that both rented their cars from Hertz.

After finding a note in my calendar for the day of my June 2025 flight reminding me to bring my passport, I remembered that I also never actually shared my drivers license when I went through security at Reagan National Airport on that day because I did not yet have a Real ID, a security-enhanced drivers license that is now required by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for all domestic travel. Instead, I showed the TSA agent my government-issued U.S. passport.

Here’s where it gets interesting: I was able to find my mother’s drivers license in this service as well, and the timestamps for her images are just a few seconds apart from mine. That’s notable because we both handed our licenses to the Hertz rental car representative at the same time.

According to my mom, the only place she gave her drivers license to that day was the rental car company, and if memory serves that is also true for me. I don’t recall if the rental car representative inserted our licenses into any kind of machine, but I remember they held onto them for several minutes behind the counter while we were signing various forms. KrebsOnSecurity sought comment from Hertz and will update this story in the event they reply.

Zach Edwards is a well-known security and privacy researcher who recently launched a service called DecryptAds to help people better understand how online advertisers are tracking them. A scan of Edwards’s drivers license is available for purchase on this identity theft service, and Edwards said the timestamp on his record corresponds to the middle of a trip last month to Las Vegas for the annual DEFCON security conference.

Edwards told KrebsOnSecurity that although he did not rent a car in Vegas, he did hand over his license at the TSA checkpoint, at a marijuana dispensary in Vegas, and at his hotel (the Aria). But he said the only one of those three that for sure scanned his ID in some kind of device was the dispensary.

To enter Planet13’s weed dispensary in Las Vegas, one must pass through a red telephone booth. Image: Zach Edwards.

Edwards said the dispensary he visited that day was Planet13, a multi-state chain with stores in California, Florida, Illinois and Nevada. In 2022, the New Orleans-based identity provider idscan.net published a press release announcing an exclusive identity verification agreement with Planet13’s dispensaries nationally. IDScan says it processes ID verification for more than 1,000 marijuana dispensaries in 19 U.S. states.

The “trust” page of idscan.net states that the company provides identity verification services for numerous big brands, including Hertz, Target, Fedex, Motorola Solutions, the financial services giant Jack Henry, and Caesars Entertainment. And as idscan.net’s own documentation states, the technology scans IDs with both infrared and ultraviolet light. Idscan.net says the company’s systems and technology perform more than 21 million verifications monthly, at more than 20,000 locations around the world.

Image: idscan.net.

Contacted by KrebsOnSecurity, idscan.net said it was investigating the matter, but the company has not yet shared an official statement or a substantive reply to specific questions sent via email.

“At this point I’m not able to share any additional information, but the updates you have provided have been welcome, and helpful to our team’s investigation,” wrote Jillian Kossman, a marketing and operations leader at idscan.net.

During the course of my research for this story, word got around to the FBI that I was poking at the apparent source of this new identity theft service’s data. Probably they were tipped off when I shared with a trusted source that Nexus also is selling the drivers license information for the assistant director of the FBI (I did not find FBI Director Kash Patel’s license in Nexus).

Earlier this afternoon, I was added to a conference call with a half-dozen FBI agents, including senior leaders from the agency’s cyber division. During that call, the FBI shared that earlier today their New Orleans field office opened an official investigation into an apparent breach involving idscan.net.

Edwards said that as more in-person and online experiences require sharing drivers licenses, vendors who collect this sensitive data need to be held to a higher standard.

“This episode should further strengthen the resolve for people who are fighting back against online ID schemes which are requiring countless providers to ask for drivers licenses in order to access services under the guise of protecting kids,” Edwards told KrebsOnSecurity. “These systems are putting sensitive data into more and more 3rd party vendors, and we don’t have nearly the oversight to ensure they are safe.”

Larry Baldwin is principal intelligence researcher at the cybersecurity firm Cybera. Baldwin said a front and back scan of his drivers license available at Nexus contains timestamps that correspond to the date of a car rental from Hertz on a recent vacation.

Baldwin said the Nexus identity theft service presents multiple serious security and privacy threats, noting that state-issued drivers licenses are commonly used as proof of one’s identity when opening new lines of credit. Baldwin said the service could also dangerously expose many people who do not wish to be found but who cannot meaningfully change their appearance (or at least not enough to fool today’s AI-based image matching tools).

This category of people, he said, includes those fleeing domestic violence, and even people who have been assigned a whole new life and identity as part of the federal government’s witness protection program, which is generally reserved for criminal defendants in racketeering and conspiracy investigations who agree to cooperate with federal authorities.

“Just when it seems like we’re making some headway in improving authentication controls through drivers license verification systems, this happens and the very thing those improvements are dependent on are compromised,” Baldwin said.

Update, Sept. 8: IDscan.net published a brief notice saying it has “determined that an unauthorized third party may have accessed and/or copied certain customer information, including full names and drivers license or other government-issued identification numbers.” The statement said IDscan.net is notifying affected individuals and offering credit protection services.

Update, Sept. 2, 6:05 p.m. ET: A spokesperson for Caesars Entertainment said Caesars has not been a client of IDScan.net and has not used VeriScan since February 2025, despite IDScan.net listing them as a client on their website. That person said Caesars had no active VeriScan accounts at the time of the incident and did not authorize IDScan.net to retain data from its accounts, and that IDScan.net said the incident should have no impact on Caesars Entertainment.

Update, 8:56 p.m. ET: Shortly after this story was published, the Nexus identity theft service website vanished from the darkweb, replacing its login page with a plain text message that reads, “This service is no longer available.”

This is a potentially fast-moving story. Any changes or updates will be noted here along with a timestamp.

Key Takeaways An audio version of this report can be found on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Audible, & Amazon.  This intrusion began in mid-February 2024 after a threat actor exploited a vulnerability (CVE-2023-46604) on an exposed Apache ActiveMQ server. The threat actor was able to perform remote code execution (RCE) by using a Java Spring class and a custom Java Spring […]

The post Apache ActiveMQ Exploit Leads to LockBit Ransomware appeared first on The DFIR Report.

Introduction

This blog is a summary and analysis of recent additions to the Ransomware Tool Matrix (RTM) as well as the Ransomware Vulnerability Matrix (RVM). Feedback from the infosec community about these projects has been overwhelmingly positive and many researchers have contacted me to tell me how helpful they have found these to be. It makes me happy to hear how doing something in my spare time can help stop ransomware attacks and cybercriminals from exploiting our society’s systems. And it is for that reason, I shall continue to maintain these projects as long as ransomware is still around. For anyone new to these projects, please read the descriptions on GitHub or feel free to watch my talk explaining the project at BSides London.

Background on the current ransomware ecosystem as of May 2025

Following the impact of Operation Cronos against LockBit and the exit scam by ALPHV/BlackCat, the ransomware ecosystem has been even more unstable than usual. The exit scams and law enforcement infiltration operations have created a zero trust environment for the cybercriminals participating in the ransomware economy. The days of affiliates putting their faith in one RaaS platform seem to be long gone and many are experimenting and going from one RaaS to the next.

Sources of Threat Intelligence for the RTM

The RTM was updated with OSINT reports shared by cybersecurity researchers at various private service providers or vendors. The thing to remember about these reports is that the tool usage is going to be slightly outdated due to the time it takes incident response teams to wrap up an investigation, compile findings, and publish a report.

From the reports, threat groups such as Qilin, BlackSuit, RansomEXX, Medusa, BianLian, Hunters International and PLAY have been active for over one year or for multiple years. These are established groups. Since RansomHub and LockBit have shut down, it is more likely than not that the affiliates have already shifted to one of the other RaaS platforms, like Qilin, among others.

There has also been a number of ransomware operations suspected to be linked to Chinese cyber-espionage groups, such as RA World (for using PlugX), NailaoLocker (for using ShadowPad and PlugX), and CrazyHunter (for its focus on Taiwan).

Threat groups such as IMN Crew, QWCrypt (linked to RedCurl), NightSpire, SuperBlack, and Helldown are all rising threat groups that have more recently begun their ransomware campaigns.

These factors have led to seeing a large variety of tool usage in ransomware operations being observed across the landscape. The reliance on tools from sites like GitHub and other free software sites, however, continues to remain a constant theme among all of these ransomware operations.

List of sources used for the May 2025 major update to the RTM:

Tools Used by Multiple Groups

• EDRSandBlast and WKTools are relatively new tools that are being used by multiple groups to deactivate and overcome EDR tools that many victims will have on their networks to prevent ransomware attacks.
• Typical ransomware tools, such as PsExec, Mimikatz, and Rclone remain effective and still used by multiple ransomware gangs for the foreseeable future.

New Tools Added to the RTM

• The most notable new tools added to RTM include several defense evasion tools for deactivating EDRs, discovery for sensitive files, and tunnelling tools to conceal adversary network connections.

Exploits used by Ransomware Gangs added to the RVM

• As is now usual, multiple ransomware groups have been targeting Fortinet networking devices for initial access into to victim environments.
• Multiple ransomware groups continue to exploit the Windows Common Log File System (CLFS) for local privilege escalation to run hacking tools and steal credentials.
• Other exploits involve targeting edge devices, such as Check Point VPNs or PAN Firewalls, or exposed servers, such as Atlassian Confluence Data Center Servers.
• The targeting of Veeam backup software should come as no surprise as preventing backups or stealing sensitive files, such as Active Directory backups, are key objectives of ransomware gangs to complete their mission.

Conclusion

My recommendation for defenders who continue the fight against ransomware is to take some of the findings from this report and begin threat hunting, detection rule writing, and start blocking some of these tools not present in the environments you are protecting.

Here are a few sites to help you get started with:

• https://rulehound.com/rules
• https://detection.fyi
• https://www.snapattack.com/community

Key Takeaways Case Summary This case from May 2024 started with a malicious download from a website mimicking the teleconferencing application Zoom. When visiting the website and downloading a file that seems intended for installing Zoom, the user was, in fact, installing a malicious program created with Inno Setup. The malicious program was a d3f@ck […]

The post Fake Zoom Ends in BlackSuit Ransomware appeared first on The DFIR Report.

Key Takeaways Case Summary The intrusion started with the exploitation of CVE-2023-22527, a critical remote code execution vulnerability in Confluence, against a Windows server. The first indication of threat actor activity was the execution of system discovery commands, including net user and whoami. Shortly after, the threat actor attempted to download AnyDesk via curl, but […]

The post Confluence Exploit Leads to LockBit Ransomware appeared first on The DFIR Report.

The scourge of ransomware continues primarily because of three main reasons: Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS), cryptocurrency, and safe havens.

• RaaS platforms enable aspiring cybercriminals to join a gang and begin launching attacks with a support system that help extract ransom payments from their victims.
• Cryptocurrency enables cybercriminals to receive funds from victims around the world without the option to freeze or refund them due to the immutable nature of the virtual funds.
• Safe havens are countries that permit cybercriminals to launch attacks without immediate fear of arrest, enabling them to earn vast fortunes through ransomware campaigns.

With these three challenges in mind, law enforcement and governments have a very difficult job to do when it comes to fighting ransomware but fight it they must. In this blog we shall recall what counter-ransomware activities took place in 2024, analyse their effectiveness, and assess how the landscape shall evolve as a result.

A podcast version of this blog is also available here.

Ransomware Operator Arrests and Sanctions

During 2024, there were significant disruption operations by law enforcement and financial authorities targeting individuals behind ransomware campaigns (see the Table below). The main focus of 2024 for Western law enforcement was squarely on the LockBit RaaS and its affiliates as it was the largest and highest earning ransomware operation to date.

Several key players of the ransomware ecosystem were arrested, including the main developer of LockBit ransomware. Interestingly, Russian law enforcement also decided to arrest ransomware threat actors located in Moscow and Kaliningrad as well.

The ransomware ecosystem has fragmented due to the law enforcement disruptions of the largest players, such as ALPHV/BlackCat and LockBit. In the case of ALPHV/BlackCat, the operators staged a law enforcement takedown as they put up a fake seizure notice as part of an exit scam in March 2024 after the attack on UnitedHealth.

Following these disruptions, some affiliates have migrated to less effective strains or launched their own strains. This includes Akira and RansomHub at the top of the list as well as Hunters International and PLAY.

Cryptocurrency Exchanges Disrupted

During 2024, law enforcement seized funds from and sanctioned a number of cryptocurrency exchanges and individuals running payment processors using cryptocurrency (see the Table below).

One of the most interesting disclosures this year came from the UK National Crime Agency (NCA) around Operation Destablise. The NCA linked payments to ransomware gangs to money laundering networks used by Russian oligarchs to covertly purchase property and Russia Today, the state-run media organization, to covertly fund pro-Russia foreign entities.

Another notable investigation in 2024 was when the US Treasury sanctioned more Russian cryptocurrency exchanges, such as PM2BTC and Cryptex, that led to money launderers that facilitate the cashing out of ransom payments being arrested by Russian law enforcement.

Safe Havens Enabling Ransomware

While ransomware is a global problem, there are only a few countries that are to blame for this rapid expansion of the ransomware ecosystem. The state that is blamed the most for preventing many ransomware operators from facing justice is Russia. There are explicit rules posted to Russian-speaking cybercrime forums that state as long as members avoid targeting Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), they are free to operate.

The Russian ransomware safe haven theory was further proven following sanctions levied against Evil Corp by the UK, US, and Australia. One of the sanctioned men connected to Evil Corp was Eduard Benderskiy, a former Russian federal security service (FSB) official. Benderskiy is reportedly the father-in-law of Maksim Yakubets, the leader of Evil Corp, an organized cybercrime group responsible for multiple ransomware strains including BitPaymer, WastedLocker, Hades, PhoenixLocker, and MacawLocker. In total, Evil Corp has reportedly extorted at least $300 million from victims globally, according to the UK NCA. It is now clear that Evil Corp has protection from a highly connected Russian FSB official who has also been involved in multiple overseas assassinations on behalf of the Kremlin, according to Bellingcat investigators.

While a number of ransomware operators were arrested in 2024 and some were extradited to the US, the work done by law enforcement specializing in cybercrime was put in the spotlight during the August 2024 prisoner swap. Multiple countries decided to release cybercriminals, spies and an assassin as part of a historic prisoner exchange with Russia at an airport in Ankara, Turkey. The US negotiated the release of 16 people from Russia, including five Germans as well as seven Russian citizens who were political prisoners in their own country.

Notably, from a cybercrime intelligence perspective, the Russian nationals released from the West included the infamous cybercriminals Roman Seleznev and Vladislav Klyushin. The latter, Klyushin, was sentenced in 2023 to nine years in US prison after he was caught in a $93 million stock market cheating scheme that involved hacking into US companies for insider knowledge. The other cybercriminal, Seleznev, was sentenced to 27 years in prison in 2017 for stealing and selling millions of credit card numbers from 500 businesses using point-of-sale (POS) malware and causing more than $169 million in damage to small businesses and financial institutions, including those in the US.

In 2024, we saw several more Russian nationals get extradited to the US after being arrested by law enforcement in the country they were residing in. This includes the Phobos operator living in South Korea and the LockBit developer living in Israel. This follows others arrested in previous years such as a TrickBot developer arrested in South Korea as well as the two LockBit affiliates extradited to the US. There is a potential that these Russian nationals involved in ransomware could be used in prisoner exchanges in the future.

Further, another curious trend in 2024 was that some Russians inside Russia, which is firmly considered a safe haven for ransomware gang, did get arrested. This includes the SugarLocker operators arrested in Moscow and the LockBit affiliate Wazawaka who was arrested in Kaliningrad. This is alongside the money launderers arrested around Russia linked to the Cryptex exchange.

The arrests of Russian nationals in Russia for ransomware activities appear to be more symbolic than a true crackdown on this type of activity. This is because there are several dozen Russian-speaking ransomware gangs that continue to operate, as well as a plethora of other types of cybercrime in the Russian-speaking underground.

Outlook

In 2024, there was lots of significant action by law enforcement to shake up the ransomware economy. One of the main successes of the notable Operation Cronos action taken against LockBit was the sowing of distrust and disharmony in the ransomware ecosystem. Despite the admins of LockBit trying to recover, their reputation and army of affiliates have been smashed.

Many of Russian law enforcement activities could all be related to the costs of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russian authorities seizing funds of the illicit cryptocurrency exchanges could be to pay for the war in Ukraine and they could be recruiting arresting cybercriminals for offensive cyber operations related to the war in Ukraine. The true motivations of Russian law enforcement arresting these specific ransomware operators but allowing others to operate are unclear. The cybercriminals could also simply have not paid their protection money or lack connections in the FSB like Evil Corp has.

Due to the fall of LockBit and ALPHV/BlackCat in 2024, there has been a rise of other ransomware groups like RansomHub and Akira to fill the vacuum. However, the rate of attacks by these emerging groups is still noticeably lower than when LockBit was operating at full force. This should be perceived as a success for law enforcement operations in 2024 due to the overall number of ransomware attacks lowering, which we should all be thankful for.