The Paris prosecutor's office announced on Wednesday, July 23, that an individual suspected of being the administrator of XSS, a major discussion forum considered one of the world's most significant cybercrime platforms, had been taken into custody.

The authorities suspect this person, who was arrested the day before in Kyiv, of being the forum's central administrator, under the pseudonym "toha." "Investigators believe he has been active in the cybercrime ecosystem for nearly two decades," said Europol, which supported the operation, in a statement. Toha has been running the forum since 2018, when he relaunched the discussion space after the previous administrator, known under the pseudonym "Ar3s," was arrested in Belarus.

The suspect was arrested in Ukraine the day before, apprehended by local authorities acting "in the presence of French police" and with the support of Europol, according to a statement from the Paris prosecutor's office. An initial investigation on the matter was opened in July 2021 and was assigned to the Paris police prefecture's Counter-Cybercrime Brigade (BL2C). Later, "a judicial investigation was opened on November 9, 2021, on charges of complicity in attacks on automated data processing systems, extortion by an organized group and criminal conspiracy," the prosecutor's office said.

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