This is the story of the hacker known as “USDoD”. When he was young he had a vengeance on the US, and this lead him down a road of continual data breaches, until he hacked into National Public Data, which is when his spree went one step too far.
Sponsors
Support for this show comes from ThreatLocker. ThreatLocker is a Zero Trust Platform that gives organizations control over what can run and what users and devices can access. It combines prevention with real time detection and automated response, helping security teams stop unauthorized activity and quickly contain compromised machines. Learn how ThreatLocker can strengthen your defenses at threatlocker.com/Darknet.
This show is sponsored by Maze. Maze uses AI agents to triage and remediate cloud vulnerabilities by figuring out what’s actually exploitable, not just what’s theoretically risky. They remove the noise, prioritize vulns that matter, and manage remediation, so your team stops wasting time on meaningless vulns. Visit MazeHQ.com/darknet for more information.
This show is sponsored by Sentry.IO. Sentry wants to help you monitor your environment for problems. They do error tracking, stack tracing, debugging, all so that your developers can diagnose, fix, and optimize the performance of their code. This makes it so developers ship more reliable code faster. Learn more at sentry.io.
Sources
- https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-04-09/william-woods-identity-theft-social-security-matthew-david-kierans
- https://predictalab.medium.com/how-to-discover-a-major-hackers-identity-with-osint-solution-1-625deff0f0ac
- https://databreaches.net/2023/09/17/im-not-pro-russia-and-im-not-a-terrorist-infragard-and-airbus-hacker-usdod-unveils-his-new-campaigns/
- https://cyble.com/blog/u-s-armed-forces-and-defense-industrial-base-under-cyber-attack/
- https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/12/fbis-vetted-info-sharing-network-infragard-hacked/
- https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/08/national-public-data-published-its-own-passwords/
- https://www.hudsonrock.com/blog/an-avoidable-breach-fbi-hacker-leaks-sensitive-airbus-data
- https://www.gov.br/pf/pt-br/assuntos/noticias/2024/10/pf-prende-hacker-suspeito-de-invadir-sistemas-da-pf-e-de-outras-instituicoes-internacionais
- https://ritchietorres.house.gov/posts/congressman-ritchie-torres-releases-investigative-report-on-last-months-national-public-data-breach
- https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/08/nationalpublicdata-com-hack-exposes-a-nations-data/
- https://www.tecmundo.com.br/seguranca/288570-hacker-roubou-3-bilhoes-dados-eua-descoberto-brasileiro.htm
- https://hackread.com/usdod-hacker-ssn-leak-reveals-brazilian-citizen/
- https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2022-10-26/identity-theft-nightmare
- https://www.akleg.gov/basis/get_documents.asp?session=29&docid=65936
- https://abc7news.com/post/oakland-ransomware-attack-identity-theft-mayor-sheng-thao-fraud/14227735/
Attribution
Darknet Diaries is created by Jack Rhysider.
Written by Nate Nelson.
Assembled by Tristan Ledger.
Sound Design by Garrett Tiedemann.
Episode artwork by odibagas.
Mixing by Proximity Sound.
Theme song created by Breakmaster Cylinder. Theme song available for listen and download at bandcamp. Or listen to it on Spotify.
Transcript
JACK: So, back in 1988 there was this identity theft incident that happened which, when I read it, it infuriated me so badly and, well, now I want to infuriate you. So, check this story out. [Music] This all started in Albuquerque, New Mexico, like I said, 1988, and there was a hot dog stand there which seemed to hire people who were really down and out.