"Justice Department Seizes Major Cybercrime Spot RaidForums"
The Department of Justice (DOJ) seized the popular online cybercriminal marketplace RaidForums. The takedown is the latest massive sweep by the U.S. government and international law enforcement partners of online marketplaces where hackers buy and sell data. RaidForums boasted at one point of having close to 10 billion pieces of personally identifiable information for sale, making it one of the biggest destinations for cybercriminals. According to the affidavit filed by law enforcement, RaidForums operated from around 2016 through February 22 of this year as a massive online marketplace for individuals to buy and sell hacked and stolen data, including sensitive personal and financial information from victims in the United States. Among those sales included leaked data from 178 million Facebook users. Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite Jr. of the Justice Department's Criminal Divison stated that 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. According to court documents, as a part of the investigation, law enforcement obtained a copy of the backend of RaidForums' database, granting them a treasure trove of information on forum members, including account registration information, user IP addresses, and private messages with other members. This information could be used to tie cybercriminals to accounts on other platforms, who sometimes reuse the same handle, says Austin Warnick, a senior cyber intelligence analyst at FlashPoint. Warnick noted that many RaidForums users migrated to a new community called "Breach Forums" after it initially appeared the site was seized, and some used the same handle. The takedown resulted from a joint law enforcement effort coordinated by Europol and involving the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, Portugal, and Romania.
CyberScoop reports: "Justice Department Seizes Major Cybercrime Spot RaidForums"