DOJ seizes three web domain names used for cybercrime

The U.S. Department of Justice and FBI announced Tuesday they had seized domains related to the online sale of stolen personal information and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that can disrupt access to web sites. 

The specific domains seized were weleakinfo.to, ipstress.in, and ovh-booter.com — with the latter two sites offering DDoS attack services and the former selling access to information from data breaches. The seizures illustrate the game of whack-a-mole that often ensues when law enforcement target illicit online services. 

“Today, the FBI and the Department stopped two distressingly common threats: websites trafficking in stolen personal information and sites which attack and disrupt legitimate internet businesses,” said U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves in a press release. 

In fact, the services are so distressingly common that the U.S. government seized the nearly identically named weleakinfo.com in 2020. Both weleakinfo.to and weleakinfo.com claimed to offer users who subscribed to their services the ability to “review and obtain the personal information illegally obtained in over 10,000 data breaches,” according to the language used in press releases for both seizures. 

The seizures announced Wednesday were part coordinated action with law enforcement in the Netherlands and Belgium. 

Last year, one of the operators of weleakinfo.com was sentenced to two years in prison in the Netherlands, The Record reported.