Hacking a hackers' site might sound quite weird. An unknown group of hackers has taken down the infamous website WeleakData. WeLeakData is a popular site and preferred by budding hackers for exchanging ideas and codes. Following the data breach, the attackers have put up the leaked database on the dark web marketplace for sale.
WeLeakData down
The website went down in January 2020, and many reports held the FBI responsible for the outage. However, researchers at Cyble Inc were tipped off by some anonymous members of the group that it was not the FBI, but a massive cyber-attack which took the site down for days.
A few months later, the website closed down abruptly in April 2020. According to several rumours, the WeLeakData site operators may have been apprehended by the authorities, and the site was sold off to another forum member.
Off to the dark web marketplace
Cyble researchers have now found that after a brief disappearance, the entire database of WeLeakData was put on the dark web marketplace for sale. The researchers have found the data dump and determined it authentic after thorough research. According to the Cyble researchers, the forum database has user credentials like login names, email addresses, hashed passwords, IP addresses and private messages of the forum members.
Leaked data and revamped website
The leaked data could offer immense help to law and enforcement departments from several countries to track down a number of APT groups and individual attackers and to understand how a particular style of attack has been executed over the web.
Interestingly, a new website named LeaksMarket.com, which has just appeared in the market, contains similar posts, a Cyble blog noted. The new site also contains identical messages, threads and is used by the same people.
"It was clear to us by then, the original WeLeakData database has been compromised, or the original owner has decided to re-brand it," the blog added.
Since its inception in 2019, WeLeakData is known as a fierce competitor to RaidForums where cybercriminals dump breached data and acts as a marketplace for buying cybercrime-related solutions. The site has garnered immense success for its platform and the type of leaks it has published since day one.
