Cit0Day website that was launched in Jan’18 by hackers to reveal usernames, email addresses, and text passwords accessed from various data breaches was closed by the US Federal Bureau of investigation on September 14th, 2020.
But the news is out that the information on the closed database was copied by hackers before it was seized by the law enforcement agency and leaked on a major hacking forum on November 1st,2020.
A source from ZDNET says that hackers have released 30% of data from Cit0day and published it on various Telegram channels constituting 13 billion files( from appx 23600 databases) that can be used by threat actors to launch spamming, password spraying, and credential stuffing cyber attacks.
So, security researchers want every online user to change their passwords for all of their online accounts with unique ones for each account.
Currently, the FBI has failed to acknowledge the seizure of Cit0day database due to some internal policies linked to DOJ.
Also, highly placed sources from the FBI state that the arrest of Cit0day owner Xrenovi4 is fake, and the site seizure notice displayed on the website was a copy/scrap of a similar notice that was seen on Deer.io after the cyber patrol team pulled down from the web.
Note 1- The owner of Cit0Day used to offer data to hackers for a monthly/daily fee and reportedly earned millions in lines with similar services like LeakedSource and WeLeakInfo.
Note 2- Nowadays, cybercriminals are seen using the Telegram app for all their communication needs as it is safe and offers a secure mode of information exchange.
Note 3- Security researchers from CheckPoint have also confirmed that hackers are using Telegram to host chat groups related to the darknet.
