From March 2022 to November 2022, our analysts observed that the site’s membership expanded from 1,500 members to over 192,000. Breach Forums offered incentives for former Raid Forums users to migrate to the platform, including the ability to retain the paid ranking users previously held on Raid Forums on Breach Forums. Breach Forums was nearly identical to Raid Forums in appearance and layout. Following the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, a Raid Forums administrator announced that the site would ban all users found to be connecting from Russia.ĭue to the large amount of anti-Russian sentiment from the Raid Forums user base, Breach Forums became a more appealing alternative to Raid’s displaced users. This seizure was not publicly confirmed to have been a US-led law enforcement operation until April 12, 2022, when the DOJ released a public statement detailing the seizure, replaced the Raid Forums landing page with a seizure notice, and unsealed an indictment against the former owner, founder, and head admin of the site.įollowing the Raid Forums seizure, threat actors actively sought alternatives to Raid Forums on the site’s official Telegram channel, “RaidForums.” Other cybercrime venues were recommended, including Russian language venues. On February 25, 2022, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) seized Raid Forums as part of a US federal interagency and international cooperative law enforcement effort to take down the site. pompompurin became a highly reputable threat actor on the now-defunct top-tier hacking forum Raid Forums.

pompompurin gained notoriety following an FBI email exploit in October 2021, in which they sent tens of thousands of emails from an FBI domain.

“pompompurin” is an English-language threat actor who has been active on English- and Russian-language forums since at least October 2020. Let’s examine the rise and fall of Breach Forums, its impact on the cybercrime underground, and what it means moving forward. Following their arrest, Breach administrators have determined to close the forum.Ĭoincidentally, the one-year anniversary of Breach Forums occurred around the same time these events unfolded. The cycle of fraud venue shutdowns continued on Wednesday, March 15, 2023, when Breach Forums administrator Conor Brian Fitzpatrick (aka “pompompurin”), was arrested and charged with a single count of conspiracy to commit access device fraud.

Copy me that data breach