A UK national has been charged in the US for allegedly running the now-defunct The Real Deal dark web marketplace that sold illicit goods ranging from hacking tools, botnets and stolen account credentials to drugs and weapons.
Daniel Kaye, 34, was charged with access device fraud, using and trafficking in unauthorized access devices, possession of unauthorized and counterfeit access devices, and money laundering conspiracy, according to the US Department of Justice.
The authorities allege that Kaye (aka “Popopret,” “Bestbuy,” “TheRealDeal,” “Logger,” “David Cohen,” “Marc Chapon,” “UserL0ser,” “Spdrman,” “Dlinch Kravitz,” “Fora Ward,” and “Ibrahim Sahil,”) sold on The Real Deal login credentials for computers belonging to multiple US government institutions, including the Postal Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the US Navy.
Together with his co-conspirator known as “thedarkoverlord” Kaye trafficked in stolen social security numbers. The defendant allegedly laundered cryptocurrency he obtained from The Real Deal through Bitcoin “mixing” services.
Daniel Kaye is best known as a developer of and seller of the GovRAT malware used in attacks against US government and military agencies. He was also the culprit behind the 2016 Deutsche Telekom attack, which involved a variant of Mirai malware used to hijack 900,000 of telecom provider’s routers. In 2019 Kaye plead guilty in a London court for launching a series of cyberattacks against Lonestar, a Liberian telecommunications company, that crippled the country’s internet for several days. The man was sentenced to over two years in prison for his crimes.