US, Europe Take Down Illegal Online Market Selling Stolen Data

Western law enforcement announced on Tuesday, April 12, that an online marketplace that was used to buy and sell hacked and stolen personal data belonging to millions of people has been shut down.

Law enforcement in Europe and the U.S. said that RaidForums stored sensitive financial information, including millions of credit card numbers and other sensitive data belonging to Americans and others all over the world, and acted as a major online marketplace for hackers.

How Did Criminal Marketplace RaidForums Operate?

RaidForums was founded in 2015 and quickly rose to fame among criminals by providing access to high-profile database leaks that could be exploited to facilitate crimes like fraud.

But there's a catch. It was discovered on the open web rather than the darknet, as per the report of Yahoo.

Europol said that RaidForums had over 530,000 visitors, making it one of the largest illicit markets of its sort in the world, and a potent tool for low to mid-level cybercriminals. Its data was gathered as a result of data breaches and other cybercrimes during the last few years.

CNET mentioned that the U.S. Department of Justice said that the hundreds of databases contained stolen bank routing and account information, login credentials, and Social Security numbers, in addition to credit card numbers. Information taken from U.K. companies was among the data that hackers bought and sold.

Investigators discovered that the RaidForums had a membership scheme in place. Its users have to pay up to 10 euros for access to chatrooms where they could share images and material related to cybercrime.

People Who Were Allegedly Involved in RaidForums Got Arrested

According to Yahoo, Diego Santos Coelho, the founder and chief administrator of RaidForums, was detained in the U.K. on January 31 at the U.S.' request and remains in custody pending extradition.

Coelho is charged with conspiracy, access device fraud, and aggravated identity theft in a six-count indictment. According to the indictment, Coelho also personally enabled unlawful sales by operating a fee-based "official middleman" service through which he assisted others in buying and selling data by confirming the method of payment and the files being transferred before allowing the transaction to proceed.

Coelho is said to have controlled and functioned as the chief administrator of RaidForums for the past seven years, which he ran with the help of other website administrators, CNET reported.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) separately said that a 21-year-old has been arrested by the police after being suspected as one of the founders of the site. He was arrested at his home in Croydon last month.

While he was later released, officials seized £5,000 in cash, thousands of dollars in U.S. currency, and froze his crypto assets worth more than half a million dollars.

Moreover, CNET mentioned that a judge recently granted the US permission to confiscate three domains that hosted the RaidForums website.

The dismantling of the internet platform involves police from the U.K., the U.S., Germany, Sweden, Portugal, and Romania.