Report says Russia arrests alleged owner of cybercrime forum LeakBase

Russian police on Wednesday arrested the alleged administrator of the cybercrime forum LeakBase, according to state news agency TASS.

LeakBase was, in the words of the US Department of Justice, “one of the largest online forums for cybercriminals in the world” for exchanging hacking tools and passwords. Earlier this month, US authorities and Europol announced that they had shut down the official website of LeakBase, seizing its database of more than 142,000 members and 215,000 messages.

According to TASS, the alleged administrator, whose name has not been revealed, and the creator of LeakBase, was a resident of Taganrog, a port city in southern Russia.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“We are not cooperating with Russian authorities and were not involved in the reported arrest,” Europol spokesperson Claire George told TechCrunch.

LeakBase launched in 2021 and hosted an archive of compromised databases that included hundreds of millions of usernames, passwords, bank accounts, routing information, and credit card numbers.

According to the Department of Justice, the international operation against LeakBase involved law enforcement agents in 14 countries, and resulted in the execution of search warrants, arrests, and interviews in Australia, Belgium, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

In all, 13 people were arrested, according to The Record.