BreachForums: ShinyHunters Members Arrested, IntelBroker Identified as Kai West

In a major development against global cybercrime, French authorities have apprehended several key individuals believed to be instrumental in operating BreachForums, a notorious online marketplace where stolen data is bought and sold.

The arrests, executed by France’s Cybercrime Brigade (BL2C) earlier this week, target figures deeply entrenched in high-profile data breaches and persistent attempts to revive the illicit forum after previous takedowns.

A press release from the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office confirms that four individuals, identified by their online handles ShinyHunters, Hollow, Noct, and Depressed, all in their twenties, were detained on Monday.

These apprehensions are a follow-up to an earlier operation in February 2025, which saw the arrest of another prominent suspect known as IntelBroker, a British national, and are particularly significant as the individuals are suspected of pulling off major data breaches against prominent French entities, including the retail giant Boulanger, telecom provider SFR, the employment agency France Travail, and the French Football Federation.

The breach targeting France Travail alone is estimated to have compromised the sensitive personal details of a staggering 43 million individuals.

The names ShinyHunters and IntelBroker have been linked to numerous major cybercrime incidents. ShinyHunters has been associated with large-scale data breaches, including those affecting Salesforce, PowerSchool, and the Snowflake attacks which impacted companies like Santander, Ticketmaster, and AT&T. This alias is believed to represent a group of threat actors rather than a single individual.

IntelBroker rose to prominence through highly publicized breaches targeting organizations such as Facebook Marketplace, Europol, General Electric, AMD, Apple HSBC & Barclays Bank, Space Eyes, Home Depot, UAE’s Lulu Hypermarket and US Contractor Acuity, and T-Mobile data breach among others.

IntelBroker alias has now been formally identified as Kai West. As per the US Department of Justice’s unsealed four-count criminal Indictment and Complaint against West, he is accused of orchestrating a years-long hacking scheme that involved infiltrating numerous computer networks, stealing sensitive data, and then selling it.

These activities are alleged to have caused over $25 million in damages to dozens of victims across the globe. Prosecutors allege that West conspired with an online group named “CyberN******” to steal data from a wide array of entities, including a telecommunications company and a municipal healthcare provider, subsequently putting the data for sale for over $2 million.

BreachForums: A Tumultuous History

BreachForums, a central platform for trading/selling hacked data and tools for illicit digital activities faced disruption in 2023 following the arrest of its original founder, Conor Fitzpatrick, who operated under the alias “pompompurin,” in the United States. Fitzpatrick was subsequently convicted of multiple criminal offences and is awaiting resentencing on July 8 in a Virginia federal court.

In May 2024, ShinyHunters regained control of BreachForums’ domains after an administrator’s arrest, removing an FBI seizure notice. More recently, in April 2025, the forum unexpectedly went offline, with administrators attributing the shutdown to a MyBB 0day vulnerability. These latest arrests highlight ongoing international efforts to combat organized cybercrime.