Western law enforcement agencies stated on Tuesday that a global operation had disassembled an online hackers’ marketplace used to buy and sell hacked and stolen personal data belonging to millions of people and that the platform’s founder and senior administrator had been charged criminally.
Authorities claim that the RaidForums website traded hundreds of databases. The databases contained sensitive information such as credit cards, Social Security numbers, and bank account information. They had been hacked or stolen from victims.
Officials have also arrested Diogo Santos Coelho, a 21-year-old Portuguese man. Prosecutors allege that he controlled and administered the platform between 2015 and his detention in the United Kingdom in January.
On allegations of conspiracy, access device fraud, and also aggravated identity, the US is seeking his extradition to a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia.
“The takedown of this online market for the resale of hacked or stolen data disrupts one of the major ways cybercriminals profit from the large-scale theft of sensitive personal and financial information,” said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr., head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in a statement.
The site launched in 2015. It provided unique access and features to paying subscribers, including a “God” membership, according to prosecutors. The God membership provided practically unlimited access. The site allegedly provided “credits” to subscribers that allowed them to download means of identification and information from stolen databases. They could also earn credits by giving instructions on how to perform unlawful crimes.
More breaches
“Disruption has always been a key technique in operating against threat actors online, so targeting forums that host huge amounts of stolen data keeps criminals on their toes,” said Edvardas Šileris. Edvardas is the head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre. “Europol will continue working with its international partners to make cybercrime harder — and riskier — to commit.”
The FBI, Justice Department, Europol, and law enforcement organizations from Sweden, Portugal, Germany, and the UK, participated in the global operation to take down the Global operation hackers.
RaidForums was also the largest English-speaking forum and marketplace for cybercrooks, according to Alex Holden, creator of Hold Security. Its collapse will be “a major problem for the bad guys who trade based on their reputation.”
But as the criminals migrate to different forums, he said, “they will have to mark their territory, assert their position. This only means “more breaches” and more online dumping of stolen data.
