French authorities have arrested several individuals suspected of running BreachForums, one of the world’s largest online marketplaces for stolen data, according to a French news report.
Four of the suspects — known online as ShinyHunters, Hollow, Noct, and Depressed — are in their twenties and were detained earlier this week by France’s Cybercrime Brigade (BL2C), according to police sources cited by the newspaper Le Parisien.
Another suspect, known as IntelBroker, was arrested in a prior operation, sources told the newspaper. Rumors had been circulating recently about the arrest. A press release from the Paris public prosecutor’s office — cited by DataBreaches.net — said IntelBroker is a British national and was arrested in February.
The names “ShinyHunters” and “IntelBroker” have been associated with other prominent cybercrime operations.
U.S. authorities sentenced a 22-year-old Frenchman last year for involvement in a group the Department of Justice called ShinyHunters. The IntelBroker persona has been associated with the sale of stolen data from a major ethnic grocery delivery service and a breach of Washington, D.C.’s health insurance exchange. It is unclear if the suspects arrested this week are related to those cases.
French authorities accused the suspects of carrying out a series of high-profile data breaches targeting companies such as retailer Boulanger, telecom provider SFR, employment agency France Travail and the French Football Federation, according to Le Parisien.
French law enforcement has not officially commented on the arrests. The newspaper did not report the suspects’ names.
BreachForums, a notorious hub for trading hacked data and cybercriminal tools, was first disrupted in 2023 following the arrest of its founder, Conor Fitzpatrick, in the United States.
Fitzpatrick, also known as “pompompurin,” was later convicted of several criminal offenses and is scheduled to be sentenced July 8 in a Virginia federal court. He is expected to receive a prison sentence after an earlier sentence was overturned.
At the time of Fitpatrick’s arrest, the U.S. Justice Department said the forum had enabled access to personal data belonging to millions of Americans and had ties to breaches involving the FBI and Washington, D.C.’s healthcare exchange.
Although the site was taken down again in May 2024, a group of users — including the newly arrested French suspects — reportedly attempted to revive it, continuing its operations under new infrastructure. Cybersecurity researchers recently cited BreachForums in the spread of jailbroken AI tools marketed to criminals.
Joe Warminsky and Jonathan Greig contributed to this story.
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