A joint operation led by the State Criminal Police of Bavaria (Bayerisches Landeskriminalamt) and the Bavarian Central Office for the Prosecution of Cybercrime (ZCB) dubbed Operation Stream, has taken down Kidflix, one of the largest platforms for hosting, sharing, and streaming child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on March 11.
Kidflix was a disturbingly popular website with a total of 1.8 million users logging on between April 2022 and March 2025. The server was taken down on March 11 by German and Dutch law enforcement agencies, having nearly 72,000 videos at the time. The dark web site launched in 2021 and hosted over 91,000 unique videos with 6,288 hours of total running watch time during its peak. More than three videos were uploaded daily to the platform.
The operation started in 2022 and has since resulted in 79 arrests, 1,393 identified suspects, and more than 3,000 devices confiscated between March 10 and March 23, 2025. It was also supported by Europol’s European Cybercrime Center (EC3), which analyzed and provided thousands of videos as evidence to support the operation.
As is usually the case in such investigations and subsequent takeovers, the website’s server now shows a banner indicating the site has been taken over by law enforcement. The Dutch National Police claims that information about the suspects has been shared with authorities in 35 countries.
Europol’s report claims that some of those arrested not only uploaded and watched videos but also abused children.” Many of the identified suspects were also cross-referenced with Europol’s databases, revealing that a significant number were repeat offenders and already on law enforcement agency watchlists.
The site used crypto, which was then converted into tokens to view content. Users could earn tokens by uploading CSAM, verifying video titles and descriptions, and assigning categories. Similar to mainstream streaming platforms, videos were available in three different qualities, giving users the option to preview the content before paying to unlock better-quality or full-length versions.
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