The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have seized the domain name of a website, weleakinfo.com, that was allegedly selling out access to personal data including emails and passwords acquired from online breaches. Anyone now attempting to access the website now are shown a page reading “This Domain Has Been Seized”. The seizure is part of a law enforcement expanding to Europe as well including authorities from The Netherlands, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, and Germany. Two men have been arrested in Europe so far who have been alleged to have connections with the site.
According to the Justice Department, weleakinfo.com was offering access to over 12 billion indexed records and had billed itself as a search engine. Users could use the domain as a search engine to get their hands on personal data that was acquired through over 10,000 data breaches. Users could get subscriptions for a day, week, or a month and could get access to the data available on the website. According to UK’s National Crime Agency, British authorities were investigating the same website since August and had been tracking IP addresses suspected to be used for payments made on the website. They stated that the owner had generated over £200,000 from the website. A notice for public help was also released asking people to contact the Internet Crime Complaint Center of FBI to report any details of the owners of the website.
Talking about ways of tackling data breaches, a new law is expected to come up in Texas from 1 January 2020. House bill 4390 makes it mandatory for companies to report a data breach within 60 days to ensure the law enforcers get ample amount of time to investigate and set the plan of action on time.
