Raidforums, the world's largest hacker forum, was taken down by police, admin arrested

Raidforum, one of the largest black hat hacker forums where hackers buy and sell data, has had its domain name seized and has been inaccessible since late February.

As reported, Raidrofums - the world's largest hacker forum - was taken down at the end of February 2022. And now, details about this incident have been released.

Accordingly, the US law enforcement agency cooperated with Europol and several countries to carry out a campaign called Operation TOURNIQUET to take down Raidforums. The domain name of this forum was seized.

The administrator of Raidforums and two accomplices have been arrested, and the infrastructure of this illegal forum is now under the control of law enforcement.

Founded Raidforums at the age of 14

Raidforums' founder and administrator, Diogo Santos Coelho, a Portuguese national also known as Omnipotent, was arrested in the United Kingdom on January 31, 2022, and faces criminal charges. Omnipotent has been in custody since his arrest, pending extradition proceedings.

Recently, the US Department of Justice announced that Omnipotent is only 21 years old, which means he was only 14 years old when he founded Raidforums in 2015. The three hosting domains of Raidforums including raidforums.com, rf.ws and raid.lol have all been seized.

Authorities seized the infrastructure and domain name of Raidforums because the forum was where hackers illegally traded stolen data.

In a separate report, Europol said Raidforums had more than 500,000 users and was considered one of the largest hacking forums in the world. The US Department of Justice said that more than 10 billion individual records taken from hundreds of stolen databases were sold on Raidforums.

Those who maintain the operation of Raidforums are accused of acting as administrators, engaging in money laundering, stealing and uploading data to the network, and trading stolen information.

Omnipotent allegedly took control of Raidforums since January 1, 2015 with the help of several other administrators. The group makes money by charging for different membership levels, selling access to VIP areas of the forum, etc.

Omnipotent also acts as an intermediary for transactions taking place on the forum.

Raidforums, one of the largest black hat hacker forums where hackers trade data, has had its domain name seized and has been inaccessible since late February.

When accessing Raidforums, users will be redirected to the login page and asked to enter their account name and password. When the user does so, they will receive a message that the account or password is incorrect and will not be allowed to perform further operations.

Raidforums, the world's largest hacker forum, was taken down by police, admin arrested Picture 1 Raidforums, the world's largest hacker forum, was taken down by police, admin arrested Picture 1

Meanwhile, the security community spread information that Jaw - the administrator of this forum announced that the domain name raidforums.com has been seized and will be transferred to a new domain. At the same time, Jaw also warned users to change their passwords and delete all access logs.

However, when users access the new address, they only see a message saying this is a backup domain name of Raidforums, with no other content.

Raidforums was founded in 2015 and is used by many hackers to share and sell data obtained after cyber attacks. This is where many security incidents have been discovered, such as selling Facebook account information or Vietnamese student profiles.

According to many experts, the shutdown of this hacker forum may be a way to limit hackers from calling for attacks, exchanging information or buying and selling data during a period when many Russian and Ukrainian websites are becoming targets of hacker attacks.

Previously, Raidforums was taken offline on January 30 and only resumed operations on February 12.