During the operation “Data Breach,” the Brazil Police detained a USDOD hacker involved in the hacks of national databases and FBI systems. The attacker, known as EquationCorp, has been carrying out cyber attacks for several years, leaking confidential information on hacker forums.
One of the most notable attacks was the hacking of the Infragard portal, a platform used by the FBI to exchange information with critical organizations in the USA. Another incident involved hacking the National Public Data (NPD), which led to the exposure of personal data and social security numbers of millions of US citizens. It was reported that USDOD shared data from 80,000 Infragard participants on specialized websites.
Despite eluding law enforcement for a long time, the situation changed when USDOD attacked Crowdstrike and leaked internal threat lists. This drew more attention to the cybercriminal.
Following the leaks related to Crowdstrike, Brazilian publisher Techmundo received an anonymous report identifying the attacker as a 33-year-old Brazilian resident named Luan G. USDOD confirmed this information in an interview with Hackread, admitting to living in Brazil and acknowledging that his identity was already known to certain companies before the Infragard attack.
The Federal Police of Brazil, armed with this information, located and arrested the hacker in Belo Horizonte on October 16 as part of the “Data Breach” operation. The police also conducted searches and seized evidence linking the hacker to the Federal Police data breaches on May 22, 2020, and February 22, 2022.