Dutch police say they have removed Redline and Meta credential stealer malware

Today the National Police announced that it has been given access to the Redline and Meta servers. Not to be confused with Facebook parent company Meta, Redline and Meta are a type of malware known as infostealers that criminals can use to obtain user and company credentials. Operation Magnus, a joint effort between the Dutch National Police, the FBI, NCIS and several other law enforcement agencies, disrupted the illegal instruments.

notes that Redline has been operating since 2020, while the states that Meta is newer, but “pretty much the same.” A 50-second video in English posted on the Operation Magnus website also mentions some “VIPs” or people “very important to the police” that authorities are looking for.

Redline is often cited as the malware responsible for the . Specops, a password management company, discovered that Redline was used to it nearly half of the 170 million passwords from data collected by KrakenLabs. Even gamers aren’t immune to Redline; McAfee discovered that a variant was hidden inside .

The video showed how the agencies accessed user data, IP addresses and Telegram bots that criminals use to steal sensitive data. In addition, authorities found the source code of both malware programs on the servers.

While there is no news of arrests, the Operation Magnus website states that “the parties involved will be notified and legal action will be taken.” There’s also a countdown until almost 20 hours later, promising more news to come.

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