FBI Takes Down WeLeakInfo, Stops Access to Stolen Data

Last January 16, 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced its seizure of WeLeakInfo. Apart from closing down the illegal website, the authorities also captured two individuals believed to be linked with the site.

WeLeakInfo.com is a website designed to provide individuals with usernames, email addresses, and passwords obtained from data breaches. According to International Business Times, buyers may purchase this personal information for a price.

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Based on the article released by ZD Net, the WeLeakInfo site poses as a search engine where users could provide data mined from over the world. The page was reportedly claiming to provide over 12 billion indexed records housed on its page. Data obtained and indexed supposedly came from over 10,000 data breaches worldwide.

FBI Takes Down WeLeakInfo

Aside from providing confidential information, the website also sold subscription packages to interested parties. Subscriptions supposedly provided customers with “unlimited searches and access during the subscription period (one day, one week, one month, or three months,” states International Business Times.

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The cheapest access to the website was priced at $2 per day, reveals the ZD net.

Following the government control of the website, state officials say that buyers will find themselves face to face with a message.

The banner reads, “This domain has been seized.” Under the banner, the message states, “The domain for WeLeakInfo has been seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation pursuant to a seizure warrant issued by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia under the authority of 18 U.S.C. 981 982, inter alia, as part of coordinated law enforcement action” by several figures from the United States, Germany, Netherlands, Northern Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

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Two suspects associated with operating the WeLeakInfo.com website were apprehended last Wednesday, January 15, 2020. The arrests were made in the Netherlands and Northern Ireland, with both individuals being aged 22. The suspects also made a profit from operating the website.

In a statement by the British authorities, “The credentials are known to have been used in further cyberattacks in the UK, Germany, and the US.”

The WeLeakInfo website closure is the second seizure by the United States authorities. In 2017, ZD Net shares officials removed LeakedSource from the web.

However, three other websites are operating on the same modus. These include Dehashed, Leak-Lookup, and Snusbase. These were allegedly patterned after Have I Been Pwned, where individuals can check if their credentials were compromised.

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