Part of the database of the forum and its owners is available free of charge, the hackers offered to purchase the rest for 1 bitcoin. Experts hope that the action will allow a series of arrests and deal a major blow to the drug trade.
According to the leaked data, the owner and developer of the forum is a citizen of Latvia Artem Shvedov, one of the former developers is Roman Kukharenko, registered in the Moscow region, and the current administrator is a citizen of Ukraine Alexander Prokhozhenko.
Cybersecurity experts pointed out that in 99% of cases a person, whose name domain and hosting such resources are registered, may not even know about it.
According to Blockchair, a total of 20.57 bitcoins (about $1 million) went through the Legalizer forum's cryptocurrency wallet. At the same time, it is associated with larger wallets. More than 5.3 thousand bitcoin (about $248 million) passed through one of them.
In addition, the email address given by the hacker who hacked Legalizer matches the contact whose user calls himself a Russian-speaking hacker and an information security specialist at the shadow site o3shop.
An analyst of the operational monitoring group Angara Professional Assistance said that usually shadow forums are hacked "because of competition or partner revenge." In his opinion, the attack on Legalizer may be related to the redistribution of the drug market or extortion.
The expert admitted that hacking Legalizer can lead to arrests.
State borders may also become an obstacle for law enforcement agencies. Although the forum is oriented at the Russian-speaking audience from the CIS, it may be physically located on servers hosted in a country where drugs are legal.
