RaidForums hacking site taken down by UK and global partners

The illegal marketplace had provided criminals with stolen personal data

The illegal marketplace RaidForums has been shut down and its infrastructure seized. Photo: Europol

One of the world's largest hacking forums has been taken down in an international operation.

The illegal marketplace RaidForums made a name for itself by selling access to high-profile database leaks from a number of US corporations across different industries.

The databases contained information on millions of credit cards, bank account numbers and routing information, and the usernames and associated passwords needed to access online accounts.

“The datasets were obtained from data breaches carried out in recent years,” Europol said.

It has been shut down and its infrastructure seized as a result of Operation Tourniquet, a joint investigation by the US, UK, Sweden, Portugal and Romania.

The forum’s administrator and two of his accomplices have also been arrested.

Operation Tourniquet, co-ordinated at the international level by Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, was the culmination of a year of “meticulous planning” between the law enforcement authorities involved in preparation for the action.

“Disruption has always been a key technique in operating against threat actors online, so targeting forums that host huge amounts of stolen data keeps criminals on their toes,” the head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, Edvardas Šileris, said.

“Europol will continue working with its international partners to make cybercrime harder — and riskier — to commit.”

Launched in 2015, RaidForums was considered one of the world’s biggest hacking forums with more than half a million users.