WeLeakInfo Website Taken Down in International Law Enforcement Operation
WeLeakInfo(.)com, a website that sold stolen personal data to subscribers, has been seized by the FBI in an action supported by the UK's National Crime Agency, the Dutch National Police Corp, the German Bundeskriminalamt, and the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
The site advertised itself as something similar to Troy Hunt's 'haveibeenpwned' service: "Have your passwords been compromised? Find out by searching..." The big differences, however, were that WeLeakInfo provided users with plaintext passwords for other people, and charged their users. For just $2, anybody could make as many WeLeakInfo searches as they wished for a whole day. From there, subscriptions increased to $7 for a week, $25 for a month, and $70 for three months access.
The searchable data was claimed to be a total of 12 billion records gathered from 10,000 data breeches. Retrieved data could include names, email addresses, usernames, phone numbers, and passwords for online accounts.
Users of the site began to notice problems on Wednesday, commenting on Twitter, for example, "There was a red maintenance sign on the top. I'm thinking maybe they did run into an issue and its bigger than they thought.. or they are all on vacation somewhere lolz."
But by Thursday this was replaced by a full "This domain has been seized" notice. At the same time, the U.S. Deparmtent of Justice announced, "the seized domain name -- weleakinfo.com -- is now in the custody of the federal government, effectively suspending the website's operation. Visitors to the site will now find a seizure banner that notifies them that the domain name has been seized by federal authorities." The District Court for the D ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
