On Wednesday, Russian police arrested the suspected administrator of the cybercrime forum LeakBase, as reported by the state-owned news agency TASS.
The U.S. Department of Justice described LeakBase as “one of the world’s largest online forums for cybercriminals” for exchanging hacking tools and passwords. Earlier this month, U.S. authorities and Europol announced they had shut down LeakBase’s official site and seized its database containing over 142,000 members and 215,000 messages.
TASS reported that the alleged administrator and creator of LeakBase was a resident of Taganrog, a coastal city in southern Russia. The individual’s name was not disclosed.
The Justice Department did not immediately provide comments. “We don’t cooperate with Russian authorities and were not involved in the reported arrest,” said Europol spokesperson Claire Georges to TechCrunch.
Launched in 2021, LeakBase hosted an archive of hacked databases, including hundreds of millions of usernames and passwords, banking account details, and credit card numbers.
The international operation against LeakBase, spearheaded by the Justice Department, engaged law enforcement agents from 14 countries, leading to search warrants, arrests, and interviews in Australia, Belgium, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
In total, there were 13 arrests, according to The Record.