Russian police on Wednesday arrested the suspected administrator of the cybercrime forum Leakbase, state news agency TASS reported.
As the US Department of Justice has stated, LeakBase was “one of the world's largest online forums for cybercriminals” to share hacking tools and passwords. Earlier this month, US authorities and Europol announced they had shut down LeakBase's official website and seized a database containing more than 142,000 members and more than 215,000 messages.
According to TASS, the alleged administrator (the creator of LeakBase, whose name has not been made public) was a resident of Taganrog, a coastal city in southern Russia.
The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.
“We are not cooperating with Russian authorities and are not involved in the reported arrests,” Europol spokesperson Claire Georges told TechCrunch.
LeakBase was founded in 2021 and hosted an archive of hacked databases containing hundreds of millions of usernames and passwords, bank account and routing information, and credit card numbers.
The international operation against LeakBase involved law enforcement agencies in 14 countries, with search warrants executed, arrests and interviews conducted in Australia, Belgium, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States, the Department of Justice said.
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According to The Record, a total of 13 people were arrested.