U.S. law enforcement authorities have successfully seized the clear web domain of the notorious hacking forum BreachForums, also known as Breached.
The seizure comes three months after the apprehension of the forum’s owner, Conor Fitzpatrick, who went by the alias Pompompurin, on cybercrime charges. The domain, previously hosted at Breached[.]vc, now displays a seizure banner indicating the intervention of agencies such as the FBI, Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General, and the Department of Justice.
This action involved cooperation with law enforcement agencies globally, including the U.S. Secret Service, Homeland Security Investigations, Dutch National Police, Australian Federal Police, U.K. National Crime Agency, and Police Scotland.
The seizure banner, a common practice in domain takedowns, featured the forum’s logo along with an unconventional addition – handcuffs incorporated into Pompompurin’s avatar. Alongside BreachForums, law enforcement also seized the pompur[.]in domain, identified as Pompompurin’s personal site.
While the clear net domain now displays the seizure banner, the dark web counterpart currently shows a “404 Not Found” error. Attempts to obtain comments from the FBI and the Justice Department were unsuccessful at the time of reporting.
Interestingly, the domain seizures extended to impact DataBreaches.net, a site reporting on data breaches, whose domain was also seized in the operation. In a technical move, all seized domains underwent a change in DNS servers to ns1.seizedservers.com and ns2.seizedservers.com, both name servers associated with law enforcement during domain seizures.
The operation reflects ongoing efforts by authorities to combat cybercrime and hacking activities on a global scale.
