Russia arrests alleged owner of cybercrime forum LeakBase, report says

In Brief

On Wednesday, Russian constabulary arrested the alleged head of the cybercrime forum LeakBase, according to the state-owned quality bureau TASS.

LeakBase was, arsenic the U.S. Department of Justice enactment it, “one of the world’s largest online forums for cybercriminals” for sharing hacking tools and passwords. Earlier this month, U.S. authorities and Europol announced that they had unopen down LeakBase’s authoritative site, and seized its database of much than 142,000 members and 215,000 messages.

According to TASS, the alleged head and creator of LeakBase was a nonmigratory of Taganrog, a coastal metropolis successful confederate Russia. 

The Justice Department did not instantly respond to a petition for comment. 

“We don’t cooperate with Russian authorities and were not progressive successful the reported arrest,” Europol spokesperson Claire Georges told TechCrunch.

LeakBase was launched successful 2021 and hosted an archive of hacked databases that included hundreds of millions of usernames and passwords, banking relationship and routing information, and recognition paper numbers. 

According to the Justice Department, the planetary cognition against LeakBase progressive instrumentality enforcement agents successful 14 countries, and resulted successful the execution of hunt warrants, arrests, and interviews successful Australia, Belgium, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

In total, determination were 13 arrests, according to The Record.

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