Russian Hacker Site Maza Gets Hacked: Usernames, Email Ads, and Passwords Compromised

Urian B., Tech Times 04 March 2021, 07:03 pm

(Photo : Screenshot From Pxhere Official Website) Russian Hacker Site Maza has Been Hacked: Usernames, Email Ads, and Passwords Compromised

In the very latest string of "hits" coming from the Russian dark web forums, it seems like one of the most popular and prominent crime sites called Maza has just been breached by someone some time earlier during the week. In other words, one of the most popular hacker forum sites for dangerous criminals has just been hacked!

Hacker forum site Maza hacked

According to the story by Gizmodo, this is a huge news since Maza, or previously known as Mazakafa, has actually long been a destination for a huge array of different criminal activities. These activities would include the distribution of malware, money laundering, even the selling of stolen credit card data and more.

The forum is basically considered to actually be "elite" for hackers and quite hard to join. Some time in the past, the forum has actually been a cesspool for what was noted as some of the most prolific cybercriminals in the whole world.

Whoever reportedly hacked Maza was able to net about thousands of data points regarding the site's users. This includes hashed passwords, usernames, email address, and a few more. This was according to an intelligence firm called Flashpoint's report.

Hackers hacking hackers?

There were basically two warning messages given then scrawled across the forum's very own home page. It was said that the user data has been leaked and that the forum itself has been hacked! According to the reports of KrebsOnSecurity, the intruder actually subsequently dumped the reportedly stolen data around the dark web. This spurred fear into a number of criminals that their very own identities could have been exposed. The validity of the hacker data was also verified by the threat intelligence firm known as Intel 471.

This particular hack actually comes quite shortly after two other similar attacks happened on two different Russian cybercrime forums called Exploit and Verified. The hacks occurred some time earlier this year. It has also been noted that the whole successive targeting of these supposed high-level forums can be quite unusual. Although criminal hackers have also been known to hack each other in the past, it's still puzzling as to what exactly is happening in this scenario.

Police hack hackers?

As of the moment, it's hard to switch things together as a number of users from Exploit have actually been hypothesizing that the recent takedowns weren't really the result of other rival hacker gangs but actual law enforcement action. Krebs noted that this theory came from one of the dark web users.

It was noted that only intelligence services or even people themselves who know where the specified servers are located can be capable of pulling something like this. Three forums in just a single month is quite weird. The user then noted that they do not think that those were just regular hackers. In fact, it was said that someone is now purposefully ruining the forums.

Flashpoint's recent report gives similar info as there are discussions of the recent attacks possibly being the result of official or unofficial government intervention. If the said hacks are now a policing tactic, it could be a fairly new one.