According to BleepingComputer, the FBI once again closed down the notorious hacker forum BreachForums on the morning of May 15, local time. The predecessor of the forum was banned in a joint law enforcement operation in early 2023.
BreachForums was once a well-known data breach forum used by cyber hackers to share stolen data. After the Europol law enforcement portal was recently attacked and data was stolen, the forum became a leak channel for this data, which may also be One of the main reasons why it was seized this time.
At present, the homepage of the website has been shown to be controlled by the FBI. Law enforcement officials have confiscated the back-end data of the website and are currently soliciting more information on criminal activities on the forum. The home page also shows two personal portraits of the website administrators Baphomet and ShinyHunters, covered with the prison iron fence logo.
The forum homepage has been shown to have been seized by the FBI.
If the FBI had obtained the hacker forum’s back-end data, they would have the email addresses, IP addresses and private message records of all members of the forum, information that could aid in a law enforcement investigation of any of its members.
In addition, the FBI also seized a Telegram channel associated with the forum. Law enforcement officials posted a notification message in the channel through the account of the administrator Baphomet, indicating that the administrator may have been arrested and that the personal device is in the hands of law enforcement officials.
The FBI used the administrator Baphomet’s account to post messages in the Telegram channel
The infamous BreachForums
BreachForums is the successor to a series of hacker forums, the earliest being RaidForums, which was launched in 2015 and quickly became the largest forum site for distributing stolen data. The forum was seized in a joint law enforcement operation in early 2022, and the 21-year-old founder and administrator Diogo Santos Coelho was arrested.
But soon after, Pompompurin, one of the active members of the forum, created a new forum called “BreachForums (aka Breached)” to fill the void left by RaidForums. The site quickly gained popularity and was used by thousands of members to leak and sell stolen data. The forum was seized by the FBI in March 2023 and Pompompurin was arrested after one of its members leaked data from health insurance agency DC Health Link involving information about U.S. House members and staff.
The latest BreachForums was taken over by Baphomet and collaborated with ShinyHunters, another notorious seller of stolen data, to launch a new BreachForums forum. Like its predecessor, BreachForums quickly became popular among hackers, leaking and selling data from well-known companies such as AT&T, 23andMe, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Home Depot, Dell, PandaBuy, and The Post Millenial.
Reference sources:
FBI seize BreachForums hacking forum used to leak stolen data
