Illegal online marketplace ‘RaidForums’ has been taken offline following a sting conducted by Europol.

A forum administrator and two accomplices were arrested during the operation, police confirmed. Among those was a UK citizen, according to the National Crime Agency (NCA), one of the agencies involved in the operation.

The 21 year old suspect, originally from Croydon, is suspected of being an administrator on the website.

Police believe that UK-based administrators were helping to manage memberships and launder payments through separate businesses.

At the time of the arrest, officers seized £5,000 in cash, thousands in US dollars and put a freeze on crypto assets worth more than half a million dollars.

A spokesperson from the NCA, said: “RaidForums had developed into one of the largest hacking forums online where hacking tips and stolen data were frequently exchanged.

“Data from some of the most high profile hacking incidents in recent years could be located on the site and often the victims – real people, found themselves vulnerable to further crime like fraud.

What is RaidForums?

Launched in 2015, RaidForums was widely regarded as one of the world’s biggest hacking forums, boasting a community of over half a million users.

This marketplace was known for selling access to high-profile database leaks belonging to companies across the globe.

Some of these databases contained information on millions of credit cards, bank account numbers and routing information, as well as usernames and associated passwords needed to access online accounts.

These datasets were often obtained from data breaches and other exploits carried out by cybercriminals and hacker groups.

Operation Tourniquet

Dubbed Operation Tourniquet, the police operation was led by Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, and included support from law enforcement agencies in the UK, United States, Sweden, Portugal and Romania.

During the operation, Europol revealed partners worked closely within the framework of the Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce (J-CAT) hosted at Europol to identify key targets and establish a strategy to prepare for the final phase of the investigation

Recommended

• The 11 most expensive NFTs ever sold
• New UK grant to help support next generation of tech startups
• How can digitisation help healthcare delivery in Scotland?

This close collaboration enabled investigators to define the different roles the targets played within the RaidForums marketplace, such as the administrator, the money launderers, the users in charge of stealing/uploading the data, and the buyers.

Edvardas Šileris, Head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, commented: “Disruption has always been a key technique in operating against threat actors online, so targeting forums that host huge amounts of stolen data keeps criminals on their toes. Europol will continue working with its international partners to make cybercrime harder – and riskier –to commit.”

Get the latest news from DIGIT direct to your inbox

Our newsletter covers the latest technology and IT news from Scotland and beyond, as well as in-depth features and exclusive interviews with leading figures and rising stars.

To subscribe, click here.