Latest cybersecurity reporting from selected sources.

Police arrested the alleged admin of XSS.is, a major cybercrime forum whose trusted escrow service helped power the underground economy. On 22 July 2025, French and Ukrainian police arrested a 38-year-old man in Kyiv and shut down XSS.is, the most influential Russian-language cybercrime forum of the past decade. Europol, which coordinated the operation under the […]

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a new Linux backdoor named PamDOORa that's being advertised on the Rehub Russian cybercrime forum for $1,600 by a threat actor called "darkworm." The backdoor is designed as a Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM)-based post-exploitation toolkit that enables persistent SSH access by means of a magic password and specific TCP port combination.

Russian police arrested a Taganrog resident believed to be the owner of LeakBase, a major online forum used by cybercriminals to buy and sell stolen data and hacking tools. [...]

The alleged administrator of the LeakBase cybercrime forum has been arrested by Russian law enforcement authorities, state media reported Thursday

On July 22, 2025, the European police agency Europol said a long-running investigation led by the French Police resulted in the arrest of a 38-year-old administrator of XSS, a Russian-language cybercrime forum with more than 50,000 members. The action has triggered an ongoing frenzy of speculation and panic among XSS denizens about the identity of the unnamed suspect, but the consensus is that he is a pivotal figure in the crime forum scene who goes by the hacker handle "Toha." Here's a deep dive on what's knowable about Toha, and a short stab at who got nabbed.

Europol on Monday announced the arrest of the suspected administrator of XSS.is (formerly DaMaGeLaB), a notorious Russian-speaking cybercrime platform

The suspected administrator of the Russian-speaking hacking forum XSS.is was arrested by the Ukrainian authorities yesterday at the request of the Paris public prosecutor's office. [...]

The U.S. government today unsealed criminal charges against 16 individuals accused of operating and selling DanaBot, a prolific strain of information-stealing malware that has been sold on Russian cybercrime forums since 2018. The FBI says a newer version of DanaBot was used for espionage, and that many of the defendants exposed their real-life identities after accidentally infecting their own systems with the malware.

User Panels and Command and Control Domains SeizedLaw enforcement and Microsoft struck a blow against malware used to steal login credentials and financial data, seizing the central command structure and thousands of online domains used to control the Lumma Stealer. Lumma first appeared on Russian-language speaking cybercriminal forums in 2022.

US, UK and Australia Target Zservers for Supporting LockBit, Other Cybercrime GroupsA Russian bulletproof hosting service used by cybercriminals including the LockBit ransomware group has been sanctioned by Australian, British and American agencies. Zservers has been advertised in criminal forums as an aid to avoid law enforcement investigations and takedowns.

Last week, the United States joined the U.K. and Australia in sanctioning and charging a Russian man named Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev as the leader of the infamous LockBit ransomware group. LockBit's leader "LockBitSupp" claims the feds named the wrong guy, saying the charges don't explain how they connected him to Khoroshev. This post examines the activities of Khoroshev's many alter egos on the cybercrime forums, and tracks the career of a gifted malware author who has written and sold malicious code for the past 14 years.

In 2021, the exclusive Russian cybercrime forum Mazafaka was hacked. The leaked user database shows one of the forum's founders was an attorney who advised Russia's top hackers on the legal risks of their work, and what to do if they got caught. A review of this user's hacker identities shows that during his time on the forums he served as an officer in the special forces of the GRU, the foreign military intelligence agency of the Russian Federation.

In 2020, the United States brought charges against four men accused of building a bulletproof hosting empire that once dominated the Russian cybercrime industry and supported multiple organized cybercrime groups. All four pleaded guilty to conspiracy and racketeering charges. But there is a fascinating and untold backstory behind the two Russian men involved, who co-ran Russia's most popular spam forum for years.

A threat actor has leaked the complete source code for the first version of the HelloKitty ransomware on a Russian-speaking hacking forum, claiming to be developing a new, more powerful encryptor. [...]

A prolific threat actor has been operating on Russian-language forums since 2020, but then he accidentally infected his own computer and sold off its contents to threat researchers.

A threat actor known as Spyboy is promoting a Windows defense evasion tool called "Terminator" on the Russian-speaking forum RAMP (short for Russian Anonymous Marketplace). [...]

The identity of the second threat actor behind the Golden Chickens malware has been uncovered courtesy of a fatal operational security blunder, cybersecurity firm eSentire said

A threat actor is selling on a Russian-speaking hacking forum what they claim to be hundreds of gigabytes of data allegedly stolen from U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) servers. [...]

A threat actor named InTheBox is promoting on Russian cybercrime forums an inventory of 1,894 web injects (overlays of phishing windows) for stealing credentials and sensitive data from banking, cryptocurrency exchange, and e-commerce apps [...]

A Yandex source code repository allegedly stolen by a former employee of the Russian technology company has been leaked as a Torrent on a popular hacking forum. [...]