The arrests are the result of an FBI investigation, dubbed 'Operation Card Shop', that saw the agency set up its own forum called 'Carder Profit' where people could ostensibly buy and sell card data and other personal information useful to fraudsters.

The site ran for nearly two years, attracting carders who needed to register with valid e-mail addresses and, on occasion, secure recommendations from other users or pay fees.

During the time it ran, the FBI recorded the discussion threads posted to the site, as well as private messages between registered users and Internet protocol addresses.

The agency used the information to contact institutions and people to warn them of breaches, preventing estimated potential losses of more than $205 million involving 411,000 compromised cards.

In coordinated raids, 11 people have now been arrested in the US, six in the UK, two in Bosnia, and one each in Bulgaria, Norway and Germany. Another two were arrested today in foreign countries based on provisional arrest warrants obtained by the US.

Among the US arrests is Mir Islam, allegedly the leader of hacking group Ugnazi, which claimed to have knocked out Twitter last week.

Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara says: "As the cyber threat grows more international, the response must be increasingly global and forceful. The coordinated law enforcement actions taken by an unprecedented number of countries around the world today demonstrate that hackers and fraudsters cannot count on being able to prowl the Internet in anonymity and with impunity, even across national boundaries."