In Taganrog, security officers detained the administrator of “one of the largest international hacker platforms,” which had been used for four years to distribute databases of personal data. This was reported by Interior Ministry spokeswoman Irina Volk.
She did not name the resource. TASS, citing a source, reports that it was the LeakBase forum.
According to the Interior Ministry, the platform published hundreds of millions of account records, banking details, usernames, passwords, and corporate documents — all of this information had been obtained through hacks.
The ministry says such information could be used for fraud.
The Taganrog resident was detained in a case on unlawful access to computer information (Part 3 and Part 6 of Article 272.1 of the Russian Criminal Code). He was placed in pretrial detention.
On March 4, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that the forum had been shut down as a result of an international operation involving 14 countries. Security services seized databases and two domains through which the platform operated. They also carried out searches and arrests against 37 forum users.
The platform had 142,000 users. Their data also ended up in the hands of the security services.
LeakBase appeared in 2021. Investigator Ilya Shumanov writes that the forum’s servers were probably located in Sweden. According to him, the administrator was 33-year-old Artyom Kuchumov.