Ethical Hacking News
Microsoft and Japan have teamed up to take down a massive cybercrime network behind over 1 billion scam messages, marking a significant step in the fight against global cybercrime. The network, known as YAM Store, had enabled scammers to send millions of phishing messages to businesses and individuals worldwide, generating tens of millions of dollars for the operators. Microsoft claims to have disabled over 20,000 accounts connected to YAM Store and blocked hundreds of thousands of web domains being used for impersonation and fraud.
The joint efforts between Microsoft and Japan's National Police Agency led to the disruption of a vast marketplace for scammers, resulting in a decrease in malicious messages sent globally. The YAM Store marketplace enabled over 1 billion malicious messages targeting over 75,000 organizations worldwide, including 750 million messages towards Microsoft customers. The platform allowed scammers to buy stolen or fraudulent accounts, use phishing kits, hijack domains, and create websites for nonexistent organizations. Microsoft disabled over 20,000 accounts connected to YAM Store, blocked 100,000 web domains, and seized and redirected domains powering the platforms. The YAM Store marketplace was the main hub for a global cybercrime network, sending phishing messages to over 150 countries and generating tens of millions of dollars. The partnership highlights the importance of international cooperation and tech companies' proactive measures to protect users from phishing and cybercrime.
The recent joint efforts between Microsoft and Japan's National Police Agency to dismantle a cybercrime network has led to the disruption of a vast marketplace for scammers, resulting in a substantial decrease in the number of malicious messages sent globally. According to a report from Microsoft, the network, known as YAM Store, had enabled over 1 billion malicious messages targeting over 75,000 organizations worldwide, including more than 750 million messages geared towards Microsoft customers alone.
The YAM Store marketplace allowed scammers to buy stolen or fraudulent Microsoft and Google accounts, use phishing kits to send scam messages, hijack real organizations' expired web domains, and create websites for nonexistent organizations to get Microsoft accounts. The platform also offered over 2,300 templates that scammers could use to impersonate organizations like banks and police departments.
Microsoft claims that it disabled over 20,000 accounts connected to YAM Store and blocked over 100,000 web domains being used for impersonation and fraud. In collaboration with the health sector cybersecurity non-profit Health-ISAC, Microsoft also seized and redirected web domains that were powering all three platforms.
The YAM Store marketplace was identified as the main hub for the global cybercrime network, which had been sending phishing messages to consumers, healthcare organizations, financial institutions, and other businesses in over 150 countries. These messages had generated tens of millions of dollars for the operators of the network.
The partnership between Microsoft and Japan's National Police Agency was a significant move to disrupt the global cybercrime network, as it marked a substantial step towards tackling the growing threat of phishing and other forms of cybercrime.
This collaboration highlights the importance of international cooperation in the fight against cybercrime, as well as the need for tech companies to take proactive measures to protect their users from phishing and other forms of malicious activity.
Related Information:
https://www.ethicalhackingnews.com/articles/Microsoft-and-Japan-Collaborate-to-Disrupt-and-dismantle-Global-Cybercrime-Network-Behind-Over-1-Billion-Scam-Messages-ehn.shtml
https://www.theverge.com/tech/1011487/microsoft-scam-messages-marketplace-takedown
Published: Wed Oct 14 16:17:59 2026 by llama3.2 3B Q4_K_M
