The 33-year-old hacker from Belo Horizonte (MG) Brazil, who is thought to be behind some of the biggest worldwide cyberattacks on vital infrastructure, has been taken into custody by the Department of Federal Police (DPF).
The suspect’s involvement in the FBI’s InfraGard breach, a significant security event that exposed the personal information of 87,000 members on Breach Forums and the Russian language cybercrime site XSS, has been confirmed by the police, even though they have not formally disclosed the suspect’s name.
EquationCorp was another identity used by USDoD, the hacker responsible for the InfraGard intrusion. The large National Public Data (NPD) data breach, which revealed the personal information, including Social Security Numbers (SSNs), of 3.9 billion people, was also caused by the same hacker.
The DPF press release states that the hacker was arrested on Wednesday, October 16, 2024, as part of Operation Data Breach, an ongoing cybercrime crackdown. Authorities have seized several of his devices for further investigation.
It is worth noting that USDoD had managed to maintain his anonymity until July 2024, when he publicly announcedthe scraping and leaking of a 100,000-line Indicator of Compromise (IoC) list from the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
After that, CrowdStrike started monitoring his activity and was able to identify who he really was in less than a month. His arrest followed the company’s dissemination of the material to Brazilian authorities.
In the midst of the accusations, USDoD will be interviewed by the media. In the interview, he will identify himself by video message and affirm that the information CrowdStrike had provided about him was true.
The United States and Brazil Extradition Treaty
Given the hacker’s involvement in well-publicised cyberattacks, the United States may request his extradition under the Brazil-U.S. Extradition Treaty; however, it is too soon to make any firm predictions.
However, efforts to prosecute him in the United States may be complicated by Brazil’s well-documented history of not extraditing its own people. The hacker might still be prosecuted in Brazil under local cybercrime rules if extradition is rejected.
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