The hacker resource Breach (BreachForums) was closed after the arrest of its founder and administrator, known under the nickname Pompompurin. The remaining site administrator, Baphomet, said that law enforcement could gain access to the resource’s servers and Pompompurin’s machine, which means that it is unsafe to continue working.
Let me remind you that at the beginning of this week, American law enforcement agencies reported the arrest of a New Yorker who, they believe, is the owner and founder of the BreachForums hacker forum, and is known online as Pompompurin.According to court documents, the detainee was charged with conspiracy to induce individuals to sell devices for unauthorized access. It was also reported that at the time of his arrest, the suspect admitted to FBI agents that his real name was Conor Brian FitzPatric and that he was Pompompurin, the owner of the Breach Forums hack forum.
BreachForums has been the largest data breach hack forum in recent times and is commonly used by hackers and ransomware to leak information. The resource was launched by Pompompurin last year after the FBI shut down the RaidForums hacking site.
Personally, Pompompurin and other members of BreachForums are involved in many high-profile hacks and data leaks, including the data theft of millions of Robinhood users, the data leak of 5.4 million Twitter users, the recent attacks on Acer, Activision, and so on.
Immediately after Pompompurin’s arrest, BreachForums administrators assured that even in the absence of the founder, the site would continue to work as usual, since the admins had full access to its infrastructure. However, now the situation has changed.
According to Bleeping Computer, in recent days, Baphomet, the administrator who remained in charge, has published a series of messages in which he stated that he was shutting down the site and moving it to a new infrastructure, protected from possible compromise by law enforcement agencies.
Baphomet wrote that the migration process is slow, as admins are trying to maintain operational security (opsec) and do not want their identities to be revealed by the authorities.
The original plan was to move the site to a new, untraceable infrastructure that would allow the community to continue using BreachForums. But now Baphomet has released a “latest update” and said that, according to its information, law enforcement officers have probably already gained access to Pompompurin’s car.
The fact is that when the BreachForums infrastructure was disabled, the old CDN server remained on the network, which hosted not very important data.
Fearing that Pompompurin’s devices are now under the control of law enforcement and have access to the infrastructure of the resource, Baphomet has decided to close BreachForums permanently, allowing community members to choose where they want to go next.
Journalists note that the site’s Telegram channel is still working, and Baphomet plans to discuss with the owners of other hack forums the potential possibility of creating something new.
