LeakedSource Operator Pleads Guilty in Canada
Canadian authorities announced last week that Defiant Tech Inc., the company that ran LeakedSource, pleaded guilty to trafficking identity information and possession of property obtained through crime.
According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Defiant Tech entered a guilty plea one year and a half after charges were brought as part of a law enforcement operation dubbed Project Adoration, which included assistance from the FBI and the Dutch National Police.
LeakedSource claimed to be a notification service that informed users if their credentials were compromised in a data breach. The service disclosed several major breaches, including ones affecting FriendFinder Networks, VerticalScope, Last.fm, LinkedIn, DailyMotion and Rambler.
However, unlike other breach notification services, such as Have I Been Pwned, LeakedSource also gave subscribers access to usernames, passwords (including in clear text), email addresses and IP addresses. LeakedSource services were often advertised on hacking forums and there was suspicion that its operators were actively looking to hack organizations whose data they could add to their database.
The LeakedSource database was said to store information on 3.1 billion accounts and the RCMP said Defiant Tech earned roughly CAD$247,000 (USD$184,000) from trafficking identity information.
Project Adoration was launched in 2016, when the RCMP learned that LeakedSource was hosted on servers located in Quebec. The service was shut down in January 2017 and its operator, 28-year-old Jordan Evan Bloom of Thornhill, Ontario, was charged in December 2017.
The latest information released by Canadian authorities does not mention Bloom, only Defiant Tech.
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Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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