Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit has reported disrupting the activities of major cybercrime-as-a-service provider Storm-1152. Microsoft says Storm-1152 has created for sale approximately 750 million fraudulent Microsoft accounts, earning the group millions of dollars in illicit revenue, and costing Microsoft and other companies even more to combat their criminal activity.

Fraudulent online accounts of the type of Storm-1152 act as the gateway to many types of cybercrime, including mass phishing, identity theft and fraud, and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

Microsoft says that its disruption strategy involves obtaining a court order to take websites used by Storm-1152 offline, thereby removing fraudulent Microsoft accounts and the websites used to sell services that can bypass security measures on other well-known technology platforms