An FBI raid has taken down a trio of domains pointing to a cybercrime nest, RaidForums.
According to the report, the seizure of the RaidForums website, a popular marketplace for cybercriminals to buy and sell hacked data, brought unsealed criminal charges against RaidForums’ founder and chief administrator, Diogo Santos Coelho, aged 21, of Portugal.
Coelho was arrested in the United Kingdom on Jan. 31, at the United States’ request and remains in custody pending the resolution of his extradition proceedings.
The domains taken down in the FBI raid are RaidForums.com, registered at Cloudflare, RF.ws, registered at NameSilo, and Raid.lol, registered at Epik.
All domains use the Cloudflare reverse proxy DNS service to hide the locale of their hosting provider.
Prior to its seizure, RaidForums members used the platform to offer for sale hundreds of databases of stolen data containing more than 10 billion unique records for individuals residing in the United States and internationally:
At the time of its founding in 2015, RaidForums also operated as an online venue for organizing and supporting forms of electronic harassment, including by “raiding” – posting or sending an overwhelming volume of contact to a victim’s online communications medium – or “swatting” – the practice of making false reports to public safety agencies of situations that would necessitate a significant, and immediate armed law enforcement response.
More information via the US Department of Justice web site.
