A site that tracked the release of personal information into the public domain following hacks has been taken offline, reportedly as the result of a raid by US law enforcement.
LeakedSource has been tracking hacked user accounts across the Web from high-profile incidents, like the Yahoo and Ashley Madison hacks, since November 2015 but the website has suddenly gone offline, and an unsourced explanation has been posted to Pastebin by a user with the name of ‘LTD’. Trying to access results in an error message:
“Service UnavailableThe server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.” In some instances, cached pages are being served by a CDN.
LeakedSource allowed users to input any of their own personal data to see if it had been made available on the Web, and therefore available to potentially misuse by hackers. However, for a fee, the service allowed users to search for anyone’s leaked details that had been posted online. A cache of the page shows that this was against LeakedSource’s terms of service, but that didn’t stop it being misused by some people.
According to the Pastebin information, the servers used to run the site have been confiscated by US authorities, but that the owner of the site hasn’t been arrested.
“Leakedsource is down forever and won’t be coming back. Owner raided early this morning. Wasn’t arrested, but all SSD’s got taken, and Leakedsource servers got subpoena’d and placed under federal investigation,” the explanation says. There’s no confirmation of this right now, however.
In a separate post on Pastebin, another user claims to have hacked the site’s databases and found that it was keeping logs of searches that include a number of different terms, including username, password, salt and hash. Again, there’s no confirmation of this and the site is currently down without explanation.
If you’re looking for an alternate service that allows you to check if your details have been leaked online, but doesn’t actually reveal your personal info to everyone, then HaveIBeenPwned is worth checking out.
Related: Over 400m account details reportedly hacked from FriendFinder’s adult sites
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
