BreachForums gets (yet another) "Star" studded reboot: "Not some young adults in their basement"

The infamous BreachForums has gotten yet another reboot, the hacker community tells Cybernews. And, while still in its infancy, the new admins vow “BreachStars” will be a nod to all the predecessors that have come before it.

The infamous cybercriminal marketplace has been shuttered since the takedown of its most recent advocate and administrator, Shiny Hunters, allegedly nabbed by French authorities back in July (but more on that later).

Officially launched on Tuesday, the newest generation of hacker administrators say they’ve studied the forum’s past imperfections and promise a “built from the ground up” marketplace stable enough to satisfy any Breached community member, past, present, and future.

“BreachForums alternative is here and run by BreachForums fans!” the new commanders told Cybernews via email.

“We've created this forum as an reinvisioned to all the predecessors, RaidForums and many iterations of BreachForums,” the admins said, also posting a similar missive on the new BreachStars website.

The fledgling managers, who claim to be “highly experienced professionals and not some young adults in their basement,” say they will not follow in the footsteps of those before them, acknowledging that the “previous forums have been seized, disrupted, and/or disappeared.”

Instead, the new directors say the latest BreachForums iteration will be “a fresh start,” going so far as to require all previous members to re-register on the site, forfeiting any ranking street cred due to security concerns.

“We will not reinstate any prior ranks you've had on any predecessors forums, since we have no way of verifying, nor are we associated/affiliated with any predecessors,” the admins said, stressing the stricter terms simply “falls down to OPSEC.”

“We take this very seriously and we recommend everyone to continue on this path of a new beginning,” they said, although in a secondary post, they declared a "change of heart," offering former members the opportunity to restore their previous rankings with a screenshot verification.

“We wont suffer the same fate"

The newbie site captains say the main reason for the current reboot is because of “all these unprofessional forums we've seen come up and disappear after a few days to weeks,” proclaiming they are the “few people around who are capable of running a forum at this scale.”

“We wont suffer the same fate and we will not break your trust," the BreachStars admins say.

“We've read hundreds of court documents related to takedowns/disruptions, we've studied them, studied the common mistakes people do and it is near impossible for us to make those same mistakes,” the managers promise.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” they reiterate.

Meantime, the new chiefs remind their would-be members that “while the forum is stable, it is still a work in progress” and to expect bugs and glitches while they diligently work to eliminate them.

Among the many plans to grow the forum in the future, the admins say their most pressing initiative involves “creating an automatic escrow (middleman) system” for the site, presumably to wash their hands of having to deal with any financial transactions.

Other additions planned for the near future include: a hidden service version of the forum, a private messaging system, a reputation system, a search function, and a moderation system.

The admins say they welcome suggestions, ask members to please be patient, and report any flaws found on the site as directed. They are offering compensation for any vulnerabilities reported.

So far, the site statistics as of Friday already boast 2,189 users, 1,245 posts, 479 topics, 317 databases, and 232 leaks.

BreachForums sordid past

BreachForums has had its ups and downs since the March 2023 arrest of its former founder and top administrator, Pompompurin, aka the now 22-year-old Conor Brian Fitzpatrick from New York. Fitzpatrick allegedly created the site to replace the now-defunct hacker site RaidForums, which was busted by authorities in February 2022.

The site, first seized by the FBI during the arrest, was then resurrected that June by its second in command, Blaphomet, only to be taken down by the FBI again in May 2024.

Since then, a third iteration of Breached was claimed by both Shiny Hunters (most recently blamed for a recent Salesforce hacking campaign with ransomware cohorts Scattered Spider) and another one of the forum's notorious users, USDoD, eventually leading to a collaboration with IntelBroker, another well-known user of the site.

In April 2025, BreachForums suddenly went dark, prompting a flurry of speculation across dark web forums and Telegram channels. Some suspected law enforcement action. Others pointed fingers at rival hackers. A hacktivist group called Dark Storm even claimed responsibility, without any proof.

A handful of BreachForums replacements came and went, with none surviving after Shiny Hunters July arrest.

As for Fitzpatrick, in January of last year, the BF mastermind was sentenced to 20 years under supervised release (with two years home arrest) – meaning zero prison time – considered by many in the hacker community as a slap on the wrist.

But in a twist of judicial fate, earlier this month, the courts revoked the original deal, resentencing the BreachForums curator to three years in federal prison.

Until its 2023 FBI takedown, BreachForums was known as one of the world’s largest English-language hacking forums, with reportedly over 330,000 members.

Besides the plentitude of "bank account information, social security numbers, personal identifying information (PII), usernames, and associated passwords" put up for sale on the hacker forum, BreachForums became a cesspool for cybercriminals to trade hacking tools, know-how, and other illicit material, offering up “at least 888 datasets of stolen information containing over 14 billion individual records of PII.” authorities said of the site.

These databases "belong to a wide variety of both US and foreign companies, organizations, critical infrastructure, and government agencies," officials noted, including companies such as AT&T, T-Mobile, ADT, the EPA, InfraGuard, Beeline, Acer, Activision, and WhatsApp, and more recently, TikTok, OpenAI, and Trump Hotels, among hundreds of others.

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