The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) this week arrested a New York man on suspicion of working BreachForums, a well-liked English-language cybercrime discussion board the place a few of the world greatest hacked databases routinely present up on the market. The discussion board’s administrator “Pompompurin” has been a thorn within the aspect of the FBI for years, and BreachForums is extensively thought-about a reincarnation of RaidForums, a remarkably related crime discussion board that the FBI infiltrated and dismantled in 2022.
Federal brokers carting objects out of Fitzpatrick’s residence on March 15. Image: News 12 Westchester.
In an affidavit filed with the District Court for the Southern District of New York, FBI Special Agent John Longmire stated that at round 4:30 p.m. on March 15, 2023, he led a staff of regulation enforcement brokers that made a possible trigger arrest of a Conor Brian Fitzpatrick in Peekskill, NY.
“When I arrested the defendant on March 15, 2023, he stated to me in substance and in part that: a) his name was Conor Brian Fitzpatrick; b) he used the alias ‘pompompurin/’ and c) he was the owner and administrator of ‘BreachForums’ the data breach website referenced in the Complaint,” Longmire wrote.
Pompompurin has been one thing of a nemesis to the FBI for a number of years. In November 2021, KrebsOnSecurity broke the information that hundreds of pretend emails a couple of cybercrime investigation have been blasted out from the FBI’s e mail programs and Internet addresses.
Pompompurin took credit score for that stunt, and stated he was in a position to ship the FBI e mail blast by exploiting a flaw in an FBI portal designed to share data with state and native regulation enforcement authorities. The FBI later acknowledged {that a} software program misconfiguration allowed somebody to ship the faux emails.
In December, 2022, KrebsOnSecurity broke the information that hackers lively on BreachForums had infiltrated the FBI’s InfraGard program, a vetted FBI program designed to construct cyber and bodily risk data sharing partnerships with specialists within the personal sector. The hackers impersonated the CEO of a significant monetary firm, utilized for InfraGard membership within the CEO’s identify, and have been granted admission to the neighborhood.
From there, the hackers plundered the InfraGard member database, and proceeded to promote contact data on greater than 80,000 InfraGard members in an public sale on BreachForums. The FBI responded by disabling the portal for a while, earlier than in the end forcing all InfraGard members to re-apply for membership.
More lately, BreachForums was the gross sales discussion board for information stolen from DC Health Link, a medical health insurance change based mostly in Washington, D.C. that suffered an information breach this month. The gross sales thread initially stated the info included the names, Social Security numbers, dates of delivery, well being plan and enrollee data and extra on 170,000 people, though the official discover concerning the breach says 56,415 folks have been affected.
In April 2022, U.S. Justice Department seized the servers and domains for RaidForums, an especially in style English-language cybercrime discussion board that bought entry to greater than 10 billion client data stolen in a few of the world’s largest information breaches since 2015. As a part of that operation, the feds additionally charged the alleged administrator, 21-year-old Diogo Santos Coelho of Portugal, with six felony counts.
Coelho was arrested within the United Kingdom on Jan. 31, 2022. By that point, the brand new BreachForums had been reside for just below every week, however with a well-known look.
BreachForums stays accessible on-line, and from reviewing the reside chat stream on the positioning’s residence web page it seems the discussion board’s lively customers are solely simply changing into conscious that their administrator — and the positioning’s database — is probably going now in FBI arms:
Members of BreachForums talk about the arrest of the discussion board’s alleged proprietor.
“Wait if they arrested pom then doesn’t the FBI have all of our details we’ve registered with?” requested one fearful BreachForums member.
“But we all have good VPNs I guess, right…right guys?” one other denizen supplied.
“Like pom would most likely do a plea bargain and cooperate with the feds as much as possible,” replied one other.
Fitzpatrick couldn’t be instantly reached for remark. The FBI declined to remark for this story.
There is just one web page to the felony criticism towards Fitzpatrick (PDF), which prices him with one rely of conspiracy to commit entry gadget fraud. The affidavit on his arrest is out there right here (PDF).
Update: Corrected spelling of FBI agent’s final identify.