USDoD, the hacker allegedly behind attacks on FBI and Airbus, arrested in Brazil
Brazil’s Federal Police has arrested the hacker known as USDoD, who was allegedly responsible for several brazen high-profile cyberattacks, including one on Brazil’s federal police. We interviewed him in July.
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Brazil’s Federal Police has arrested the hacker known as USDoD, who was allegedly responsible for several brazen high-profile cyberattacks, including one on Brazil’s federal police. We interviewed him in July.
After launching “Operation Data Breach” on Wednesday to investigate several intrusions on their own systems, the police announced the arrest of an individual suspected of being responsible for posting and selling illegally obtained data.
“The prisoner boasted of being responsible for several cyber intrusions carried out in some countries, claiming, on websites, to have disclosed sensitive data of 80,000 members of InfraGard, a partnership between the FBI and private critical infrastructure entities in the United States of America,” said the statement.
Brazil’s Federal Police did not name the suspect, but a threat actor known as USDoD claimed responsibility for the December 2022 breach of the FBI’s InfraGard platform.
This attack was then followed by the leak of 3,200 Airbus vendors' names, contact information, email, and mailing addresses.
This year, USDoD wreaked havoc in the systems of National Public Data, a US-based data broker, after accessing 2.9 billion private records, including Social Security numbers. The hack has forced National Public Data to file for bankruptcy.
On July 24th, USDoD posted on BreachForums that he had leaked CrowdStrike's “entire threat actor list,” including the claim that he had obtained their “entire IOC (indicators of compromise) list” and intended to release it.
“The person under investigation must answer for the crime of hacking into a computer device,” the statement by the Brazilian police simply said.
Cybernews interviewed USDoD in July. Among other things, he said: “I can partly f**k any government I want because I don't have a flag or don't follow orders from a king. I have my own flag and that is the black flag. I'm, by nature, a pirate. I don't pick sides. I play both sides and always win.”
Less than a month after the interview, USDoD was unmasked as Luan Goncalves, a 33-year-old man from the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. Techmundo, a Brazilian publisher, received an anonymous report created by CrowdStrike that identified, or doxxed, the threat actor.
And a few days later, he himself confirmed his identity to HackRead, adding: “It is time to admit I got defeated. I won’t run, I’m in Brazil.”