America, Europe take down the notorious hacker forum RaidForums

The US and Europe crashed and confiscated the domain name of the RaidForums forum – Photo: THE RECORD

According to Reuters news agency, the European Police Agency (Europol) said it had taken down RaidForums during the “Tourniquet” operation in cooperation with the authorities of the US, UK, Germany, Sweden, Portugal and Romania.

According to AFP news agency, RaidForums – where hackers openly buy and sell stolen databases – was founded in 2015 and is one of the largest hacker forums in the world with more than half a million users.

“This black market is notorious for selling access to leaked high-end databases of several US corporations in a variety of industries,” Europol said.

“These databases contain information on the millions of credit cards, bank account numbers, usernames and associated passwords needed to access online accounts,” the Ha Noi-based agency said. Lan added.

Europol says the Tourniquet campaign to bring down the RaidForums forum has been completed after a year of planning.

Meanwhile, on April 12, the US also announced charges against the founder and administrator of RaidForums, Mr. Coelho.

According to Reuters, Mr. Coelho (21 years old), Portuguese, was arrested in the UK on January 31. The US is seeking Coelho’s extradition to the country.

The U.S. Department of Justice said it had obtained court authorization to seize three different RaidForums domain names, raidforums.com, Rf.ws and Raid.lol.

In addition to administrator Coelho, Europol said two of his accomplices were also arrested, but did not provide further information about them.

Coelho is facing a six-count indictment, including aggravated identity theft. According to the indictment, Mr. Coelho controlled and administered the RaidForums website from January 1, 2015 to January 2022.