BreachForums Admin Arrested in New York

A New York resident has been arrested previous 7 days for working the notorious cybercrime web site acknowledged as BreachForums.

In accordance to court docket documents submitted last Wednesday, Conor Brian Fitzpatrick of Peekskill was apprehended on the working day pursuing an FBI investigation and charged with conspiracy to commit access machine fraud. Bloomberg described Fitzpatrick was introduced on bail after being arrested and is now anticipated to look in entrance of federal courtroom on Friday.

FBI agent John Longmire explained that through the operation, Fitzpatrick verified being the proprietor and administrator of BreachForums. He also admitted hiding guiding the alias “Pompompurin” online, which was normally utilised on BreachForums to vouch for the legitimacy of posted knowledge on the website.

“I have individually been involved in the investigation of the defendant, as well as in identifying no matter if the defendant is the exact same specific I billed in the criticism,” Longmire stated, as proven in a deposition doc by the agent.

The Pompompurin moniker was also at the rear of a 2021 exploit of the law enforcement portal that led to the sending of thousands of fraudulent e-mail from an FBI email tackle.

The arrest comes virtually a calendar year soon after a cross-border law enforcement group shut down the RaidForums hacker web-site. The development of BreachForums around the same time loaded that hole for a lot of threat actors, who turned to the web-site to purchase knowledge stolen during facts breaches.

At the time of creating, it is estimated the web-site contains the stolen databases of approximately 1000 internet sites. In October last 12 months, a BreachForums user claimed obligation for the Optus attack.

Examine additional on the Optus breach below: Optus Confirms Hack Exposed Details of Virtually 2.1 Million Australians

Following Fitzpatrick’s arrest, BreachForums has been taken offline (maybe by other admins) and continues to be so as of nowadays, Monday, March 20. In advance of likely offline, a information from a web site administrator stated necessary measures had been taken to protect the site’s infrastructure and users. The admin also reported they had restricted Pompompurin’s account to reduce unauthorized administrator actions as they monitored suspicious action.

The arrest comes a number of months immediately after research from Sophos recommended cyber-criminals have missing at the very least $2.5m to scammers on 3 underground web pages, which include BreachForums, in 2022.

Some parts of this article are sourced from:
www.infosecurity-journal.com