- Microsoft, Europol and German police dismantle RedVDS cybercrime infrastructure
- RedVDS enabled phishing, BEC and malware via cheap disposable Windows cloud servers
- The platform caused losses of $40 million in 2025; criminals used AI for phishing and deepfakes
Microsoft said it helped disrupt a major cybercrime platform that operated in the United States and the United Kingdom, causing millions of dollars in damage to various companies.
In an announcement, Microsoft said that, working with Europol and German law enforcement, it successfully seized the infrastructure used by RedVDS, a cheap platform that facilitated phishing, business email compromise, malware distribution, and more.
“For just $24 per month, RedVDS gives criminals access to disposable virtual computers that make fraud inexpensive, scalable, and difficult to trace,” Microsoft said in its statement. “Services like these have quietly become one of the drivers of the current surge in cybercrime, fueling attacks that harm individuals, businesses and communities around the world. »
Millions of damages
Microsoft explained that RedVDS sells access to Windows virtual cloud servers. All virtual machines came from a single Windows Server 2022 image, leaving a unique fingerprint that researchers were able to track.
It rented servers from hosting providers in the United States and Europe, giving cybercriminals the ability to use IP addresses close to their targets and thus evade location-based security filters.
Besides Microsoft, several private companies have also joined as co-plaintiffs, including H2-Pharma and the Gatehouse Dock Condominium Association. The former claims to have lost $7.3 million in a Business Email Compromise (BEC) attack, while the latter claims to have lost nearly $500,000 in residential funds.
By 2025, in the United States alone, RedVDS facilitated losses of at least $40 million, Microsoft concluded. In Canada and Australia, more than 9,000 customers were scammed.
Microsoft also discovered that RedVDS customers would use Generative AI to create credible phishing emails, as well as other advanced tools for face swapping, video manipulation and voice cloning.
On average, scammers reportedly send more than a million phishing emails each month to Microsoft customers alone, compromising around 200,000 of them in less than six months.
Via BeepComputer
The best antivirus for every budget
Follow TechRadar on Google News And add us as your favorite source to get our news, reviews and expert opinions in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can too follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form and receive regular updates from us on WhatsApp Also.
