Based on a user's personal report on a blog, we learned that today the Ministry of Justice announced that it has filed charges against the administrator and hundreds of users of the world's largest child sexual exploitation (child pornography) site.
In November 2017, when the user was working for a news site, a group of hackers contacted him to say they had “broken” a massive child sexual exploitation operation on the dark web called “Welcome to Video.” The hackers also discovered thousands of IP addresses of people who had claimed to have connected to the website.
He continues by emphasizing that at that time he had spoken with his chief editor to somehow approach this story, but because the case was under federal investigation, they did not want to jeopardize this effort.
Another problem that also existed was that there was no legitimate way to gain access to the website to verify that it was what the hackers claimed.
The hackers gave him a username and password so he could log in and verify what they were telling him. But he still couldn't log in because the website might contain images of child pornography, and only federal agents were allowed to access illegal content. While journalists had a lot of flexibility and freedoms, this wasn't one of them.
After a call with several lawyers, he decided there was no legal way to write the story without verifying the website's contents.
The story was dead, but the website was not.
The decision, therefore, that he took was to report the story to the government, something that was very strange for a journalist to cooperate with national security, as many times they come face to face. However, such an event, which deals with child exploitation, comes above all.
He contacted the FBI and spoke with a special agent. They agreed to send him the addresses found on the dark web, which contained a list of thousands of users.
However, afterwards, even though weeks had passed, there was no progress, not even from the federal agents.
The hackers themselves gave him some analysis of the IP locations. He discovered that there were users from the US, the US Senate, the US Air Force, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Apple, Microsoft, Google Samsung, and many universities around the world. However, he could not identify specific individuals.
After about two years, he finally had an answer. Through the US Attorney's Office, they confirmed that the website had about 250,000 photos and videos of children who had been sexually abused. The government described the site as the largest child pornography site.
This morning, after there was new information about the website being taken down, he obtained the documents published on the Ministry of Justice website and found a screenshot of the website with the full address.
In total, there were 337 arrests, including a former Global Security special agent and a border patrol officer. Authorities rescued 23 abused children.
It was a battle from which he ultimately emerged victorious, even after a long period.
