RaidForums Hacker Marketplace Shut Down in Cross-Border Law Enforcement Operation

A single of the world’s most notorious hacking marketplaces, RaidForums, has been shut down and its infrastructure seized in a major cross-border legislation enforcement procedure.

Procedure TOURNIQUET, which was coordinated by Europol in support of the independent investigations of the US, UK, Sweden, Portugal and Romania, also led to the arrest of the RaidForums’ administrator and two of his accomplices.

Europol exposed the operation followed a 12 months of meticulous preparing and info sharing in between investigators from the different national police forces in just the Joint Cybercrime Motion Taskforce (J-CAT) framework. This enabled a very clear picture to be established of the unique actors and roles they place performed in just the market. These contain the administrator, the income launderers, the buyers in charge of stealing/uploading the knowledge and the prospective buyers.

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RaidForums, which launched in 2015, is considered to be one particular of the world’s biggest hacking community forums, with a local community of additional than 50 % a million buyers. The marketplace has sold access to hundreds of thousands of knowledge stolen in several superior-profile info breaches in modern decades, like hugely delicate facts this kind of as credit history cards and lender account quantities and usernames and related passwords essential to entry on the internet accounts.

Alleged examples include 40 million person documents stolen from preferred cell app Wishbone and the personal aspects of hundreds of countless numbers of people  tested for COVID-19 in 2020.

Head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, Edvardas Šileris, commented: “Disruption has always been a essential procedure in working against risk actors on line, so focusing on community forums that host large quantities of stolen data retains criminals on their toes. Europol will carry on performing with its international associates to make cybercrime more challenging – and riskier – to commit.”

This week, Europol announced a main new operation intended to crack down on Russian oligarchs and businesses trying to circumvent sanctions in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.