Tag: forum | SpinSafe

Administrator of Darkode Hacking Forum Sentenced to Prison

November 16, 2023/in Computer Security

The US Justice Department announced on Wednesday that a man who admitted being an administrator of a now-defunct cybercrime forum named Darkode has been sentenced to prison.

Thomas Kennedy McCormick, aka ‘Fubar’, a 30-year-old from Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for his role in running Darkode. The sentence also includes three years of supervised release.

McCormick, who joined the site as a member in 2009, ended up being one of multiple administrators. Authorities said he was one the last admins of Darkode, before the cybercrime forum was shut down by law enforcement in 2015. The law enforcement operation resulted in 70 people being arrested, searched, or charged.

Investigators said Fubar was involved in the distribution of malware, hacking websites, as well as the theft and sale of personally identifiable information, payment cards, and bank account credentials.

When they searched his residence, law enforcement found the stolen credit card information of nearly 30,000 people in his possession.

The Justice Department said in 2022 that McCormick had agreed to assist law enforcement in the prosecution of other Darkode members.

McCormick’s 18-month prison sentence is for RICO conspiracy (12 months) and aggravated identity theft (6 months) charges, to which the man pleaded guilty. He admitted that his involvement in the operation caused financial losses totaling nearly $680,000.

There have been a few unsuccessful attempts to resurrect Darkode after the takedown.

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Visit by Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr Vivian Balakrishnan to the Cook Islands for the 52nd Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting, 9 to 11 November 2023

November 11, 2023/in Internet Security

Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr Vivian Balakrishnan visited Cook Islands from 9 to 11 November 2023 to attend the 52^nd Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Leaders Meeting, marking the first time that Singapore participated in the PIF Leaders Meeting as a Dialogue Partner.

Minister Balakrishnan delivered remarks at the 2050 Pacific Prosperity High-Level Thematic Dialogue on 10 November 2023. He highlighted that Singapore viewed relations with the PIF as strategic. As fellow Small Island Developing States, Singapore and the Pacific Islands share a commitment to tackling global challenges, particularly the existential issue of climate change. Over the past 30 years, Singapore has shared our development experience with more than 5,800 Pacific officials under the Singapore Cooperation Programme.

Minister Balakrishnan announced the launch of a three-year customised technical assistance package for the Pacific named the “Singapore-Pacific Resilience and Knowledge Sharing” (SPARKS) package. The SPARKS package comprises courses in climate resilience, cybersecurity and international law. These courses will support the Pacific’s capacity building efforts in priority areas under the PIF’s 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent, the blueprint for charting the region’s future. The transcript of Minister Balakrishnan’s remarks and a factsheet on the SPARKS package are at Annexes A and B.

During his visit, Minister Balakrishnan met several leaders from the Pacific, including PIF Chair and Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown, Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, French Polynesia President Moetai Brotherson, Kiribati President Taneti Maamau, New Caledonia President Louis Mapou, Tonga Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni, Palau Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Gustav Aitaro, Solomon Islands Minister for Foreign Affairs and External Trade Jeremiah Manele, and PIF Secretary General Henry Puna. Minister Balakrishnan had good discussions with these leaders on the Pacific’s priorities as well as how Singapore can work with them both bilaterally and multilaterally.

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MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

SINGAPORE

11 NOVEMBER…

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Hacking forum hacked, user database leaked online • Graham Cluley

June 9, 2023/in Computer Security

Hacking forum hacked, user database leaked online

RaidForums, the notorious hacking and data leak forum seized and shut down by the authorities back in April 2022, is – perhaps surprisingly – at the centre of another cybersecurity breach.

Because it seems the hacking site has been… err… hacked.

As Bleeping Computer explains, upon the demise of RaidForums many of its users jumped ship to a new hacking forum called BreachForums to trade their stolen data.

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However, in March this year the US Department of Justice announced that it had forced BreachForums offline, and arrested its alleged founder 20-year-old Conor Brian Fitzpatrick, aka “pompompurin.”

Once again, those who like to frequent criminal hacking forums realised that they had to find a new home. Some members of the site, no doubt, would have feared that the authorities might have been able to spy upon their communications and gather evidence of their various wrongdoings.

So, did they give up a life of cybercrime? Far from it! Many of them joined a new hacking forum called ExposeForums.

And it is this site which appears to have now leaked the user database of RaidForums – potentially providing law enforcement, security researchers, and – yes – other cybercriminals with a large amount of potentially sensitive information.

Raidforums leak

According to Bleeping Computer, the data includes details of 478,870 RaidForums members, “including their usernames, email addresses, hashed passwords, registration dates, and a variety of other information related to the forum software.”

Chances are that this information (and possibly more) has been in the hands of law enforcement investigators since RaidForums’ website was seized in April 2022, but there is no doubt that it would also be of interest to others.

It must be pretty nerve-wracking being a mamber of a hacking forum like RaidForums, BreachForums, ExposeForums… never quite knowing when your preferred cybercrime hangout is going to be seized by the cops, and what information they might be able to find out about you.

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Raidforums member data leaked on new ‘Exposed’ hacking forum

May 31, 2023/in Computer Security

A recently launched hacking site has published the member database of RaidForums, a notorious hacking forum taken offline in 2022.

Founded in 2015, RaidForums operated on the regular internet and was a popular hacking and data leak forum. Although it offered various illegal services, it was best known for trading stolen credentials.

The site was taken down in 2022 following an international law enforcement investigation and its founder, Diogo Santos Coelho of Portugal, was arrested. RaidForums was quickly replaced by a nearly identical site called BreachForums, but that site was taken down after its founder Conor Brian Fitzpatrick was arrested in March.

It’s often said that law enforcement operations targeting illicit sites are like a game of “Whac-A-Mole”: Every time one site is taken down, another appears. The story of RaidForums and its successors are the same. The new player in town, complete with the same design and similar illegal services, goes by the name “Exposed,” and it’s on this forum that the RaidForums data has been leaked.

A user on Exposed, going by the name of “Impotent” and claiming to be both the owner and administrator of the site (pictured), has leaked 374.7 megabytes of RaidForums data. Bleeping Computer reported today that the data consists of a single SQL file that contains the registration information of 478,870 RaidForums members, including their usernames, email addresses, hashed passwords, registration dates and a variety of other information.

How the data was obtained was not shared. Impotent told Bleeping Computer that it knows where the data came from but has promised not to disclose any details about the source. Impotent added that the member database table contains 99% of the original lines, with some removed to “cause no drama.”

“There’s no telling how this data was gathered, whether it was a new breach or just reusing data from another older breach, but it continues a well-worn pattern of malicious websites leaking customer data,” Roger Grimes, data-driven defense evangelist at security awareness training company KnowBe4 Inc., told SiliconANGLE. “It turns out that most malicious websites are no better…

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