FBI and Europol Just Shut Down LeakBase: What You Need to Know About the Massive Cybercrime Takedown

Law enforcement does not often win clean victories against cybercriminal infrastructure. When they do, the wins tend to be significant. The coordinated takedown of LeakBase by US and European authorities is one of the more impactful cybercrime enforcement actions of 2025, targeting a platform that had become a key distribution point for stolen credentials affecting hundreds of millions of accounts.

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Here is what LeakBase was, how it operated, what the takedown achieved, and what it means for the broader cybersecurity landscape.

What Was LeakBase?

LeakBase was a criminal forum specializing in the aggregation and distribution of stolen account credentials, hacking tools, and stolen personal data. The platform had accumulated more than 142,000 registered members and maintained a database reportedly containing hundreds of millions of stolen account credentials from breaches spanning multiple industries, countries, and years.

Unlike some dark web forums that require significant technical sophistication to access, LeakBase operated in a manner accessible enough to attract a large membership base, including low-sophistication actors who purchased access to credentials for use in account takeover fraud, credential stuffing attacks, and identity theft.

How LeakBase Operated

The platform’s business model combined elements of a traditional criminal marketplace with a social forum structure. Members could search for compromised credentials by domain, service, or geographic region. Hacking tools including exploit kits, phishing templates, and automated credential stuffing scripts were available for purchase or trade.

The forum moderation structure, tiered membership with increasing access at higher paid tiers, and reputation systems for sellers all mirrored legitimate e-commerce platforms in structure while operating entirely in service of criminal activity. This kind of professionalization of cybercriminal infrastructure is a defining characteristic of the modern criminal forum ecosystem.

Scale in Context: A database of hundreds of millions of stolen credentials is not an abstract threat. Each entry potentially represents access to a real person’s email, financial account, healthcare portal, or workplace system. At this scale, credential marketplaces are direct enablers of identity theft, financial fraud, and ransomware operations.

How the Takedown Happened

The operation was jointly conducted by the FBI, Europol, and law enforcement agencies from multiple EU member states. Coordinated international enforcement is required because cybercriminal infrastructure rarely respects national borders: servers may be hosted in one jurisdiction, operated by individuals in another, and serving customers in a third.

The specific technical and investigative methods used in the takedown have not been fully disclosed, which is standard practice to protect ongoing investigations and avoid giving future criminal operators a blueprint for detection avoidance. What has been confirmed is that the operation resulted in the seizure of the platform’s infrastructure and the arrest of individuals connected to its operation.

The Scale of This Enforcement Action

Comparing this operation to previous law enforcement actions against criminal forums provides useful context. The takedown of the RaidForums platform in 2022 removed what was then one of the largest credential marketplaces. BreachForums, which emerged as a successor, was itself taken down and its operator arrested in 2023. LeakBase represented a continuation of the same pattern: criminal forums emerging, scaling, and eventually being dismantled through sustained law enforcement attention.

What the Takedown Means for Cybersecurity

The Whack-a-Mole Reality

Cybersecurity professionals and law enforcement officials are candid about a fundamental challenge: taking down one criminal forum does not eliminate the underlying criminal ecosystem. The operators, members, and data that defined one platform typically migrate to successor platforms within weeks or months of a takedown.

The value of enforcement actions like the LeakBase takedown lies partly in disruption, partly in deterrence, and significantly in the intelligence gathered during the investigation. Identifying operators, members, and financial flows creates enforcement opportunities that extend beyond the platform itself.

What Individuals Should Do Now

1. Check your email addresses against HaveIBeenPwned.com to see if your credentials appeared in known breaches
2. Enable two-factor authentication on all accounts that support it, prioritizing email, banking, and work accounts
3. Use a password manager to ensure every account has a unique, strong password
4. Review recent account activity on financial accounts and email for signs of unauthorized access
5. Consider a credit freeze if you have reason to believe your Social Security number may have been exposed

The Broader Pattern: Law Enforcement vs. Cybercrime Infrastructure

The joint US-EU operation against LeakBase is part of an intensifying pattern of cross-border law enforcement cooperation against cybercriminal infrastructure. Europol’s EC3 (European Cybercrime Centre) has become significantly more capable and coordinated over the past five years, and its partnership with the FBI on criminal forum takedowns has produced results that neither agency could achieve independently.

The political will to pursue these operations has also strengthened following high-profile ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure, hospitals, and government systems. When ransomware operators are traced back to credential theft operations that use platforms like LeakBase, the connection between credential marketplaces and critical infrastructure attacks becomes explicit and politically actionable.

Bottom Line: The LeakBase takedown removes one of the larger credential distribution platforms from the criminal ecosystem. It will not be the last. But every successful takedown generates intelligence, disrupts criminal operations, and raises the risk calculation for those running similar infrastructure. That deterrence effect compounds over time.

Related: iPhone Hacking Tools Used by Cybercriminals | Fig Security Raises $38M | How to Protect Your Accounts in 2025

FBI cybercrime reporting portal IC3

Europol cybercrime operations

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