Officials said they dismantled nine organized crime groups and removed more than 27,000 URLs hosting live sports and other copyrighted media during a seven-month operation.

Anne Keast-Butler, head of the GCHQ, said her agency was developing an artificial intelligence-powered cyber shield as other nations were deploying AI in warfare.

Officials arrested the alleged administrator of First VPN, seized its servers and domains. Europol said the service appeared in almost every major recent cybercrime investigation.

Proofpoint researchers say the group behind the surge, TA416, had turned away from Europe for a few years.

Officials said 30 perpetrators have been arrested in the past year, and global law enforcement cooperation is closing the gap.

The 35-year-old faces up to 10 years in jail and authorities announced an $11 million reward for information on his alleged co-conspirator who remains at large.

Archetyp Market facilitated high-volume sales of fentanyl, cocaine, MDMA, amphetamines and synthetic opioids since 2020, according to authorities.

The international law enforcement operation is the latest to tackle cybercrime on the continent.

Evgenii Ptitsyn is said to have helped operate a ransomware-as-a-service organization that extorted millions from more than 1K victims, including schools and hospitals.

The Shadowserver Foundation put the figure at around 87,000 for a vulnerability rated as critical and first discovered in February.