Data on organizers and users of a drug-trafficking forum put up for sale in bitcoins

An unknown hacker breached a major CIS drug-trafficking forum, Legalizer, and published data on the platform’s organizers and users.

According to «Ъ», part of the information is publicly available, while the rest is being sold by the hacker for at least 1 BTC. Among the records in the database are the passport details of presumed owners, client contacts, and their correspondence.

According to Blockchair, 20.57 BTC passed through the forum’s cryptocurrency wallet (nearly $950,000 at the time of writing). The Information and Analytical Research Department at T.Hunter notes that it is also linked to larger wallets — through one of them more than 5,300 BTC (over $244 million) has moved.

Listed as the owner and developer of Legalizer in the database is Latvian citizen Artem Shvedov; one of the former developers is Roman Kukharenko, registered in Moscow Oblast, and the current administrator is Ukrainian citizen Alexander Prokhozhenko.

Some experts doubt the de-anonymisation of the real owners, noting that in most cases, when creating such resources, the domain and hosting are registered under the passport of a person who may be entirely unrelated to the forum.

Earlier in March, unknown hacked one of the oldest Russian-language hacker forums Maza.

Follow ForkLog’s bitcoin news on our Telegram — cryptocurrency news, prices and analysis.