"The investigation, opened on July 2, 2021, by the cybercrime division of the Paris prosecutor's office and assigned to the Cybercrime Brigade of the judicial police of the Paris police prefecture, led to the implementation of judicial wiretaps on the Jabber server thesecure.biz," reads the announcement. The suspected administrator of the Russian-speaking hacking forum XSS.is was arrested by the Ukrainian authorities yesterday at the request of the Paris public prosecutor's office. Bill Toulas Bill Toulas is a tech writer and infosec news reporter with over a decade of experience working on various online publications, covering open-source, Linux, malware, data breach incidents, and hacks. The French authorities state that the investigation was opened roughly four years ago, uncovering activities related to ransomware and other cybercrimes, which yielded multi-million-dollar profits. If the arrested person is the administrator of XSS, it is likely that the authorities now hold incriminating evidence against other members of the forum, which may lead to more arrests in the future. According to the French police, they were able to breach the 'thesecure.biz' server to spy on communications between users on the platform. These surveilled communications led to the opening of a judicial investigation on November 9, 2021, for complicity in attacks on data processing systems, extortion, and criminal conspiracy. In any case, this development is likely to have a chilling effect on the activity at XSS, as users fearing exposure to law enforcement will turn to other sites. This free, editable board report deck helps security leaders present risk, impact, and priorities in clear business terms.
This Cyber News was published on www.bleepingcomputer.com. Publication date: Wed, 23 Jul 2025 13:45:06 +0000