THE HAGUE: European and US police have taken down one of the world's foremost virtual private networks used by criminals to commit ransomware attacks and other serious cybercrimes, Europol said Tuesday.

Law officers led by police in Reutlingen in southern Germany, seized the Safe-Inet VPN service on Monday, taking down its servers.

"A splash page prepared by Europol was put up online after the domain seizures," the Hague-based agency said.

Active for over a decade "Safe-Inet was being used by some of the world's biggest cybercriminals... responsible for ransomware, E-skimming breaches and other forms of serious cybercrime," Europol said.