Notorious Hacking Forum Shuts Down After Admin Arrested

Last week, the FBI arrested a man believed to be “Pompompurin”, the administrator of the infamous and popular Breach Forums. A few days after the arrest, the new administrator of the cybercrime website announced that they are permanent closure of the forum.

“Please consider this as the final update for Breached,” the new admin, known as “Baphomet,” wrote on the official Telegram channel. “I’m going to delete the forum, as I think we can assume nothing is safe anymore. I know everyone wants the forum to be open, but there is no short term value to be gained from this. which will likely be a loss in the long run supporting Breached as it is.

New admin Baphomet did not respond to our request for comment.

THE apparent The end of Breach Forums comes about a year after a coalition of international law enforcement agencies led by the US Department of Justice seized RaidForums, another notorious cybercrime forum where hacked databases are allegedly advertised and sold. Breach Forums was born out of the demise of RaidForums and served much the same purpose and audience.

“I want to make it clear that if this initial announcement is not positive, this is not the end. I will be creating another Telegram group for those who want to see what follows. You have the right to hate me and disagree with my decision, but I promise you what happens will be better for all of us,” Baphomet wrote. “Give me (sic) 24 hours to rest and think about how we’re going to move on. here. I’ll be back online after that, and we’ll talk. I’m not going anywhere.

In an attached message, which was signed with Baphomet’s PGP key to prove it was genuinely written by them, they wrote that they were able to confirm that authorities had access to Pompompurin’s machine.

Baphomet explained that while he was migrating the forum servers, he discovered that someone had connected to one of the servers before him.

“Unfortunately, this probably leads to the conclusion that someone has access to the Poms machine. All the servers we use are never shared with anyone else, so someone should know the credentials of this server to be able to log in. I now feel like I’ve been put in a position where nothing can be considered secure, whether it’s our configurations, source code, or information about our users – the list is endless “Wrote Baphomet. “This means that I cannot confirm that the forum is safe, which has been a major goal since the beginning of this shitshow.

The feds accuse Conor Brian Fitzpatrick of being a Pompompurin, who faces charges in New York as well as in the Eastern District of Virginia. Fitzpatrick is charged with conspiracy to commit access device fraud.

On Monday, three days after Fitzpatrick’s arrest and before it was discovered that someone had accessed one of the servers, Baphomet announced that it was migrating the forum’s servers to keep Breach Forums alive.

That plan is no longer in motion, but Baphomet said it’s not the end.

“As for what that means now, it’s complicated. Unlike when other communities fall apart and everyone scatters, stupidly I will always be here,” they wrote.

“As the Breached community dies, I will be continuing conversations with some of the Competitor Forum administrators and various service operators who have contacted me over the past few days. I hope to work with some of these people to build a new community, which will have the best features of Breached, while reducing the attack surfaces that we’ve never properly addressed As with things like this, I have no doubt our user base can be absorbed by another community, but if there is patience, I hope to bring back something that will rival any other community that can take our place.

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Do you have information on BreachForums? We would love to hear from you. From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Wickr, Telegram and Wire @lorenzofb, or email lorenzo@techcrunch.com. You can also contact TechCrunch through SecureDrop.