Crash the RaidForums hacker forum, 21-year-old admin was arrested-Information Technology

The US and European security agencies have confiscated the domain name of the notorious hacker forum RaidForums, and arrested the admin and founder of this forum.

A notice on RaidForums.com said this domain name has been confiscated by the FBI, US Secret Service and US Department of Justice. The European Union police agency Europol and law enforcement agencies from Sweden, Romania, Portugal, Germany and the UK also participated in the campaign against the hacker forum. Two domains Rf.ws and Raid.lol were also confiscated by the US Department of Justice.

Diogo Santos Coelho, a 21-year-old Portuguese who plays the role of founder and admin of RaidForums, was arrested in the UK on January 31 and is being detained pending the outcome of extradition proceedings. Two of Coelho’s accomplices have also been arrested, according to Europol.

Coelho and his accomplices are accused of “designing and managing hardware and software infrastructure.” [của RaidForums]. sell databases”.

Identity card of RaidForums founder Diogo Santos Coelho. Source: US Department of Justice.

“RaidForums serves as a large online marketplace for individuals looking to buy and sell stolen databases,” the Justice Department said in a statement. These databases contain sensitive personal and financial information of victims in the US and other countries, including bank account numbers, credit card information, login information and security numbers. social life.”

According to the agency, RaidForums is also a place for members of the organization to harass targets online, by sending large amounts of messages to the target address (raiding) or reporting fake news to the police about the target (swatting). ).

In 2019, hackers from RaidForums infiltrated the rival forum Cracked.to and made public the data of more than 321,000 forum members. After that, the hacker also uploaded the personal information of 1.4 million GateHub crypto wallet service accounts to RaidForums.

The indictment against Diogo Coelho also describes the interactions between Coelho and the US police operating undercover, and an informant for the FBI. In March 2019, Coelho “provided an underground law enforcement officer with three stolen access credentials… to convince that [Coelho] could be trusted to sell 1.1 million units of information for the equivalent of $4,000 in Bitcoin at the time.” However, after receiving this Bitcoin, Coelho did not hand over the promised amount of information.

In April 2020, Coelho helped an unnamed accomplice sell unauthorized access information to an FBI source. This time, after receiving $4000 worth of Bitcoins, Coelho gave the link to the unauthorized download of information to an FBI source.

The announcement by US and European law enforcement agencies to take down RaidForums and arrest the forum admin ended much speculation about the fate of the forum after it was shut down at the end of February. Europol said the campaign targeting RaidForums was called “Tourniquet” and was “the fruit of a year of careful planning”.