FBI Shuts Down Infamous BreachForums in International Cybercrime Crackdown
An international law enforcement operation coordinated by the FBI has led to the seizure of the notorious BreachForums hacking forum. BreachForums, a notorious cybercrime forum, was a marketplace for threat actors to buy, sell, and exchange stolen data, including credentials, personal, and financial information. The authorities also seized the forum’s associated Telegram page.
Visitors to the BreachForums website are now greeted with a message indicating the site was seized by law enforcement. The page prominently displays the logos of the involved agencies, including the UK National Crime Agency (NCA), the Australian Federal Police, the New Zealand Police, and the Swiss police.
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“This website has been taken down by the FBI and DOJ with assistance from international partners,” reads the message on the seized site. “We are reviewing the site’s backend data. If you have information to report about cyber criminal activity on BreachForums, please contact us.”
The FBI’s statement on the seizure site breachforums.ic3.gov reveals that they are investigating the criminal hacking forums known as BreachForums and Raidforums. From June 2023 until May 2024, BreachForums, hosted at various domains including breachforums.st, breachforums.cx, breachforums.is, and breachforums.vc, was operated by the notorious hacker ShinyHunters.
Previously, from March 2022 until March 2023, another version of BreachForums, hosted at breached.vc, breached.to, and breached.co, was run by the threat actor known as Pompompurin. In July 2023, Conor Brian Fitzpatrick, aka Pompompurin, who owned BreachForums, pleaded guilty to hacking charges. Fitzpatrick was arrested in March 2023, with law enforcement agents spending hours at his residence, removing several bags of evidence. He was charged with soliciting individuals for the purpose of selling unauthorized access devices and was released on a $300,000 bond signed by his parents.
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BreachForums was initially launched in 2022 following the seizure of RaidForums by law enforcement as part of Operation TOURNIQUET. Despite Pompompurin’s claims of no affiliation with RaidForums, the site served as a successor to the earlier forum, which was operated by a hacker known as Omnipotent and ran from early 2015 until February 2022.
Individuals with information that could assist in the investigations into BreachForums v2, BreachForums v1, or RaidForums are encouraged to fill out a questionnaire available on the FBI’s dedicated site.
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Source: securityaffairs.com
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