Ping, The Administrator of the Dark Web Hacking forum called as “Hell” is just a teenager who lives in Canada and he was caught after phishing his teachers. Back in 2015, the forum was run by Ping which was the place were a lot of cybercriminals spread a large amount of stolen data.
The Forum contained personal info from famous sites – 4 Million user accounts from AdultFriendFinder and more than 27 Million passwords from 1mate.com but the forum went off the grid and shut down in July 2015.
The relation between the ‘Ping’ and a young Canadian teen was later discovered when police arrested him because he tried to hack one of his school staffs.
The incident took place long back but no media or evidence that were available to relate he was actually ‘Ping’ who had done a lot of hacking exploits. But back in June 2015, the 15-year old was arrested on suspicion of hacking a TecherLogic account.
As per the reports he used a keylogger device that would record the username and password of the affected teacher when plugged into a computer.
He didn’t stop there but sent a list of Phishing emails to all the teacher worked at his school in order to obtain the TeacherLogic Accounts. With the help of neighbors WiFi, he created the fake email to send this mail but he did access the account from his IP Address according to the legal documents.
After the through Investigation by the police, Many documents in his room are the following devices – A USB Adaptor to acquire wireless network passwords, few types of malware and a keylogger. “[The boy’s] room is a ‘hacker’s” dream,’ an alleged letter was written by a Crown Prosecutor to the boy’s attorney reads.
Finally, the police were able to relate Ping and Hell Forum after the search warrant and found he was using the name as Ping and he runs a Tor Hidden Service on his computer under the name “Ping Sec”.
According to the prosecutor, “The above-obtained info was more than enough to prove the boy is ‘Ping’ and charge him for accessing the CBE computer system”.
After the Incident it went offline and online quite a few times but it left behind a legacy as one of the best hacking forum that existed on the dark web.