The famous underground hacking forum RAMP, used to promote various malware and hacking services, including ransomware, has been seized by the FBI.
One of the organization’s operators confirmed the news in another forum, saying that the police operation had undone years of hard work. It operated two domains, one on Clearnet and another on the Tor network, both of which were seized.
The Clearnet version has been hidden and now displays the usual FBI banner: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation has seized RAMP.”
The FBI remains silent
“This action was taken in coordination with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida and the Department of Justice’s Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section,” the banner read.
At the time of writing, the Clearnet website was not accessible at all and instead returned an error message.
On XSS, an independent hacking forum, a user alias “Stallman”, who claims to have been one of the RAMP operators, confirmed that access to the forum had been lost:
“I regret to inform you that law enforcement has taken over the Ramp Forum,” they said. “This event ended years of my work to build the freest forum in the world, and although I hoped this day would never come, I always knew in my heart that it was possible. It is a risk we all take.”
At press time there was no official confirmation from the FBI, but the domain name servers have been replaced with those the FBI uses in such cases. BeepTeam most found. This means that the police will most likely have access to a large amount of RAMP users’ data, including email addresses, IP addresses, private messages, and more.
Cybercriminals who were not careful and did not take precautions to hide their identities on the platform could now be identified and even prosecuted.
RAMP was launched in 2021 when other hacking forums, XSS and Exploit, banned hosting and promoting ransomware.
On BeepTeam
