On Thursday, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) successfully seized and shut down WeLeakInfo, a website dedicated to selling access to billions of personal records seized in data breaches. WeLeakInfo has scavenged data from over 10,000 data breaches, resulting in over 12 billion unique data points. Some of the common information this site would expel includes names, addresses, passwords for various accounts, and phone numbers.
According to this local news story, the culprit behind WeLeakInfo was a 22 year old man named Arnhem. He was arrested on Wednesday. The arrest was part of a joint effort involving the FBI, the Dutch police, the United Kingdom National Crime Agency, and Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt (which translates to Federal Criminal Police Office).
At its peak, WeleakInfo was an easily searchable website offering two dollar full access trails to search and save data from the site. A full subscription cost 70 dollars for three months. Additionally, the site would deceptively attempt to portray themselves as an education tool. Indeed, WeLeakInfo claims to be an easy and fast way to perform security research, despite offering classified and personal information obtained illegally.
The website is now just a single image, informing users the the domain has been seized by the FBI, pursuant to a seizure warrant.
Leave a Comment