Brazilian federal police arrests hacker responsible for a massive theft of personal data

The Federal Police of Brazil have announced the arrest of a hacker responsible for a massive data breach that leaked 2.9 billion records containing sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers. The breach was initially discovered in August, with the data put up for sale on the dark web in April by a group calling itself "USDoD."

The breach exposed approximately 272 million unique Social Security numbers, up to 600 million phone numbers and data also includes information on 80,000 members of the FBI's InfraGard program.

It's not clear whether the breach and the arrest is related to the exposure of the data of all citizens of Brazil from January 2024.

According to the Federal Police, the arrested hacker faces charges for hacking, obtaining information, and selling the compromised data. The case carries an increased penalty due to the commercialization of stolen information.

The investigation, dubbed “Operation Data Breach”, will continue to determine whether the arrested hacker was involved in any other breaches.