John Z Black
Brunswick, ME • (207) 245-1010 • contact@johnzblack.com
The cybersecurity news cycle is mostly bad news. This week had some wins. Worth actually paying attention to them.
At least six dark web marketplaces were dismantled in a coordinated international operation, with 213 arrests. Law enforcement traced illicit transactions across 33 separate blockchains. The “just use a different coin” evasion strategy is getting harder, and the criminals know it.
The DOJ seized LeakBase, one of the largest stolen credential markets online. If you’ve been following since March, we covered the Russian arrest of LeakBase’s alleged admin under Operation Leak. This week’s seizure is the US-side move against the platform itself. The distribution channel for credential data that fed countless downstream fraud operations is gone.
The UK’s National Crime Agency froze $12 million tied to crypto investment fraud and identified 20,000-plus victims, which tells you how many people a small group of operators can run simultaneously when they have the right tooling.
And a federal court in Ohio handed down what’s being called the first conviction under the Take It Down Act, signed in 2025. The defendant used more than 100 AI models across 24 platforms to generate over 700 images targeting women and minors. The “publication of digital forgeries” charge is the new law doing exactly what it was written to do. One conviction doesn’t solve the problem. It does establish the legal foundation for the ones that follow.