Pierluigi Paganini January 17, 2020

The FBI has seized the WeLeakInfo.com websites for selling subscriptions to data that were exposed in data breaches.

WeLeakInfo.com is a data breach notification service that allows its customers to verify if their credentials been compromised in data breaches. The service was claiming a database of over 12 billion records from over 10,000 data breaches. I used the past because a joint operation conducted by the FBI in coordination with the UK NCA, the Netherlands National Police Corps, the German Bundeskriminalamt, and the Police Service of Northern Ireland resulted in the seizure of the WeLeakInfo.com domain.

The WeLeakInfo website was sized and now displays a message that informs visitors about the operation conducted by law enforcement agencies.

“The website had claimed to provide its users a search engine to review and obtain the personal information illegally obtained in over 10,000 data breaches containing over 12 billion indexed records – including, for example, names, email addresses, usernames, phone numbers, and passwords for online accounts.  The website sold subscriptions so that any user could access the results of these data breaches, with subscriptions providing unlimited searches and access during the subscription period (one day, one week, one month, or three months).” reads the press release published by the Department of Justice.”With execution of the warrant, the seized domain name – weleakinfo.com – is now in the custody of the federal government, effectively suspending the website’s operation.  Visitors to the site will now find a seizure banner that notifies them that the domain name has been seized by federal authorities.  The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued the seizure warrant.”

Law enforcement is still investigating the activities of the operators behind the service and encourage people to provide that information by filing a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) at https://www.ic3.gov/complaint/default.aspx. 

Data breach notification services is a profitable business, visitors pay a fee to access data exposed in past data breaches. A subscription fee ranges from a $2 trial to a $70 three-month unlimited access account and allows users to search for any data in the archive managed by the companies.

This is quite different from services that only alert individuals when their data are exposed in a data breach and that for this reason are considered legal.

Data breach notification services like WeLeakInfo are a mine for threat actors that could gather information on their targets before launching a cyber attack.

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – WeLeakInfo, data breach)

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