Airbus hacker wants to trade in military intelligence – media

Updated on: 18 September 2023

Vilius Petkauskas
Deputy Editor

USDoD, the hacker behind the FBI and Airbus attacks, said that his targets are “not political.” However, his future goals involve stealing and selling US and European military intelligence.

The threat actor, going by the moniker “USDoD” on criminal forums, revealed a plethora of personal details to databreaches.net in a lengthy interview.

The attacker recently posted Airbus vendor data, saying that he accessed the European aerospace giant’s site by exploiting employee access from Turkish Airlines.

USDoD identified himself as a man from South America, roughly 35 years old. The attacker supposedly holds dual citizenship in Portugal and Brazil and currently resides in Spain.

Interestingly, the attacker said that he can work with impunity from Spain as he’s granted permission to do what he pleases from a “high-ranking official.”

However, anything that an attacker targeting the defense sector says should be taken with a mountain-sized grain of salt. The interview came days after he hacked Airbus and announced US defense contractors as future targets. Attempts to confuse law enforcement with fake data points are highly likely.

USDoD said he was known as “NetSec” on the now-defunct cybercrime forum RaidForums, mostly posting US military and defense contractors. He switched to USDoD after posting FBI data on another hacker forum.

The attacker denied being pro-Russian, adding that he works with Russian individuals due to personal requests rather than political motives. The attacker said he doesn’t have religious, racial, and ethnic biases nor political motives for his attacks.

He said, however, that he refrains from attacking specific countries, such as China, Russia, South and North Korea, Israel, and Iran. USDoD denied taking any financial support for hacking and said that he prefers “a world free from political influences.”

The attackers’ future targets include Deloitte, NATO, CEPOL (European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Training), Europol, and Interpol. He has supposedly already accessed the NATO Cyber Security Defense Center and CEPOL.

One of the supposed end goals of USDoD is to set up a private company selling military intelligence on the dark web. The attacker said that he’d focus on US and European intelligence, including classified data.