From The Verge · Stevie Bonifield · · 1m 20s
Microsoft and Japan dismantle billion-message scam network
Microsoft and Japan's National Police Agency took down a marketplace enabling over a billion phishing messages targeting 75,000 organizations worldwide.
In brief
Microsoft and Japan's National Police Agency took down a marketplace enabling over a billion phishing messages targeting 75,000 organizations worldwide. Microsoft and Japan's National Police Agency dismantled a scam marketplace that sent over one billion phishing messages since January twenty twenty-six, disabling…
A billion scam messages traced to one marketplace
Microsoft and Japan's National Police Agency dismantled YAM Store, a marketplace for scammers. Since January twenty twenty-six, it enabled over one billion malicious messages targeting over seventy five thousand organizations worldwide.
“Since January 2026, YAM Store, CoGUI and Iron Man have collectively enabled more than one billion malicious messages targeting over 75,000 organizations worldwide”
How the scam marketplace worked
Scammers bought stolen or fraudulent Microsoft and Google accounts on YAM Store and used phishing kits called CoGUI and Iron Man to send scam messages.
The scale of the operation and its impact
Over seven hundred fifty million messages targeted Microsoft customers alone. The Iron Man platform offered over two thousand three hundred templates impersonating banks and police departments. The operation generated tens of millions of dollars.
Microsoft's response and takedown
Microsoft disabled over twenty thousand accounts connected to YAM Store and blocked over one hundred thousand web domains used for impersonation and fraud. With Health-ISAC, Microsoft seized and redirected domains powering all three platforms.
The main idea
Microsoft and Japan's National Police Agency dismantled a scam marketplace that sent over one billion phishing messages since January twenty twenty-six, disabling over twenty thousand accounts and blocking over one hundred thousand fraudulent web domains.
