As part of a nationwide cyber crackdown in the UK, police have arrested 21 customers of WeLeakInfo.com, a now-obsolete online service that had been previously selling access to hacked data from other websites.
The NCA said-: The suspect used stolen personal credentials to commit further cyber and fraud offenses.
Of the 21 arrested- all men aged 18 and 38- out of it 9 have been detained on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act offenses, nine for Fraud offenses, and 3 are under investigation for both. NCA also seized over 41,000 pounds in bitcoin from arrested individuals.
Earlier this January, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the UK National Crime Agency (NCA), the Netherlands National Police Corps, the German Bundeskriminalamt, and the Police Service of Northern Ireland jointly seized the domain of WeLeakInfo.com.
The service launched in 2017 and provides its users a search engine to access personal info obtained from over 10,000 data breaches and containing over 12 billion stolen credentials, including, for example, names, email, usernames, passwords for online accounts.
WeLeakInfo offered subscription plans too, allowing unlimited searches and access to the results of these data breaches during the subscription period of one day to 3 months for $2 to $70.
The cheap subscription added an advantage to the website which made it accessible to even entry-level, intern hackers, letting them get hold of a huge cache of data at just $2 for 1 day. Following the domain’s seizure in Jan, two 22-year-old men, one in the Netherlands and another in Northern Ireland, were arrested in connection with running the site. WeLeakInfo’s Twitter handle has since gone quiet. NCA also told that among the arrested men some had also purchased other cybercrime tools such as Remote Access Trojans and Crypters.
“Cybercriminals rely on the fact that people duplicate passwords on multiple sites and data breaches create the opportunity for fraudsters to exploit that,” NCA’s Paul Creffield said. “Password hygiene is therefore extremely important.”
