The Hackers Who Trolled The FBI (twice)

#OperationDownfall #BreachForums #Cybercrime On March 15th, 2022, multiple law enforcement agencies, led by the FBI, carried out a coordinated takedown. Their target? BreachForums: a notorious marketplace where hackers thrived. This wasn’t a random operation. For years, authorities had been silently tracking their members, gathering intelligence to destroy what had become the largest data-leak forum on the internet At the heart of BreachForums' predecessor was Diogo Santos Coelho, the teenage mastermind behind RaidForums, and later, Pompompurin, who took over and built BreachForums into a hub for stolen databases, hacking tools, and illicit cyber deals. But the story didn’t end there. After Pompompurin’s arrest, a new figure emerged—Baphomet—who decided to keep the forum alive. However, cracks in the operation grew, and soon, the site was shut down. This takedown wasn’t just about one forum—it exposed a network of cybercriminals, including ShinyHunters, a group responsible for some of the largest corporate data breaches in history. All the while, they were trolling the FBI. The question is: how did they manage to consistently troll the FBI for years and keep getting away with it?