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Last March 15, the facilitator and owner of BreachForums, Pompompurin, was seized by US law enforcement. The arrest led to the eventual shutdown of BreachForums – one of the most prolific dark web forums and database marketplaces in the wild.
Following the collapse of the prolific dark web marketplace come numerous other dark web forum operators attempting to replace and fill the void it left. This finding was discovered by our threat monitoring team in iZOOlogic, revealing how dozens upon dozens of both newly established and relatively older dark web forums appeared to become BreachForums successor.
None of the aspiring BreachForums replacements could best become an effective successor.
Cybersecurity researchers believe that the aspiring BreachForums successor could not be considered effective and suitable successors since it could take them a long hard run before reaching their target notoriety and status.
Some of these newly emerged forums our researchers found are ViceForum, DarkForum, KKKSecForum, ZeroForum, and DataForum.
Furthermore, our iZOOlogic experts note that for these emerging dark web forums to reach BreachForums’ prominence in the leak scene, they must be the first ones to make noise about leaking massive databases from compromised companies and get the most traffic.
In separate reports, it was revealed that to cripple its operations, FBI undercover agents bought stolen databases from the infamous marketplace and collected Pompompurin’s IP addresses and several more pieces of evidence. It is also possible that some of the appearing cybercriminal marketplaces could be the FBI’s undercover honeypots to catch and trap more threat actors.
Baphomet, a co-administrator of BreachForums, posted a message on the forum’s site before it went offline, saying they would likely relaunch in another format.
Despite having continued resilience from the authorities over the years, the FBI shutting down the prolific dark web marketplace and arresting Pompompurin had disrupted the leak scene successfully. Our iZOOlogic threat monitoring team will continue to probe and share updates about this issue as developments become available.
