Brazilian authorities reportedly have arrested a 33-year-old man on suspicion of being “USDoD,” a prolific cybercriminal who rose to infamy in 2022 after infiltrating the FBI’s InfraGard program and leaking contact info for 80,000 members. Extra just lately, USDoD was behind a breach on the shopper information dealer Nationwide Public Information that led to the leak of Social Safety numbers and different private info for a good portion of the U.S. inhabitants.
USDoD’s InfraGard gross sales thread on Breached.
The Brazilian information outlet TV Globo first reported the information of USDoD’s arrest, saying the Federal Police arrested a 33-year-old man from Belo Horizonte. In line with TV Globo, USDoD is needed domestically in reference to the theft of knowledge on Brazilian Federal Law enforcement officials.
USDoD was recognized to make use of the hacker handles “Equation Corp” and “NetSec,” and in accordance with the cyber intelligence platform Intel 471 NetSec posted a thread on the now-defunct cybercrime group RaidForums on Feb. 22, 2022, wherein they provided the e-mail tackle and password for 659 members of the Brazilian Federal Police.
TV Globo didn’t title the person arrested, however the Portuguese tech information outlet Tecmundo printed a report in August 2024 that named USDoD as 33-year-old Luan BG from Minas Gerais, Brazil. Techmundo mentioned it discovered the hacker’s actual id after being given a draft of an in depth, private report produced by the safety agency CrowdStrike.
CrowdStrike didn’t reply to a request for remark. However per week after Techmundo’s piece, the tech information publication hackread.com printed a narrative wherein USDoD reportedly admitted that CrowdStrike was correct in figuring out him. Hackread mentioned USDoD shared a press release, which was partially addressed to CrowdStrike:
A latest assertion by USDoD, after he was efficiently doxed by CrowdStrike and different safety corporations. Picture: Hackread.com.
In August 2024, a cybercriminal started promoting Social Safety numbers and different private info stolen from Nationwide Public Information, a personal information dealer in Florida that collected and offered SSNs and get in touch with information for a major slice of the American inhabitants.
Extra reporting revealed Nationwide Public Information had inadvertently printed its personal passwords on the Web. The corporate is now the goal of a number of class-action lawsuits, and just lately declared chapter. In an interview with KrebsOnSecurity, USDoD acknowledged stealing the NPD information earlier this yr, however claimed he was not concerned in leaking or promoting it.
In December 2022, KrebsOnSecurity broke the information that USDoD had social-engineered his approach into the FBI’s InfraGard program, an FBI initiative designed to construct casual info sharing partnerships with vetted professionals within the personal sector regarding cyber and bodily threats to important U.S. nationwide infrastructure.
USDoD utilized for InfraGard membership utilizing the id of the CEO of a serious U.S. monetary firm. Regardless that USDoD listed the actual cell phone variety of the CEO, the FBI apparently by no means reached the CEO to validate his utility, as a result of the request was granted only a few weeks later. After that, USDoD mentioned he used a easy program to gather all the contact info shared by greater than 80,000 InfraGard members.
The FBI declined to touch upon experiences about USDoD’s arrest.
In a prolonged September 2023 interview with databreaches.web, USDoD informed the publication he was a person in his mid-30s who was born in South America and who holds twin citizenship in Brazil and Portugal. Towards the tip of that interview, USDoD mentioned they had been planning to launch a platform for buying navy intelligence from the USA.
Databreaches.web informed KrebsOnSecurity USDoD has been an everyday correspondent since that 2023 interview, and that after being doxed USDoD made inquiries with a neighborhood lawyer to be taught if there have been any open investigations or expenses towards him.
“From what the lawyer came upon from the federal police, that they had no open circumstances or expenses towards him at the moment,” Databreaches.web mentioned. “From his writing to me and the conversations we had, my sense is he had completely no concept he was in imminent hazard of being arrested.”
When KrebsOnSecurity final communicated with USDoD through Telegram on Aug. 15, 2024, they claimed they had been “planning to retire and transfer on from this,” referring to a number of media experiences that blamed USDoD for leaking almost three billion shopper data from Nationwide Public Information.
Lower than 4 days later, nonetheless, USDoD was again on his regular hang-out at BreachForums, posting customized exploit code he claimed to have written to assault just lately patched vulnerabilities in a well-liked theme made for WordPress web sites.