Pierluigi Paganini
September 18, 2023
TransUnion is an American consumer credit reporting agency. TransUnion collects and aggregates information on over one billion individual consumers in over thirty countries, including “200 million files profiling nearly every credit-active consumer in the United States”.
A threat actor who goes by the moniker “USDoD” announced the leak of highly sensitive data allegedly stolen from the credit reporting agency. The leaked database, over 3GB in size, contains sensitive PII of about 58,505 people, all across the globe, including the America and Europe
According to researchers vx-underground who reported the leak, the archive contains data that dates back to March 2nd, 2022, which could be the data of the data breach.
This leaked database has information on individuals all across the globe including the Americas (North and South), as well as Europe
vx-underground states that leaked data includes individual first name, last name, Internal TransUnion identifiers, sex, passport information, place of birth, date of birth, civil status, age, current employer, information on their employer, a summary of financial transactions, credit score, loans in their name, remaining balances on the loans, where they got the loan from, when TransUnion first began monitoring their information.
Today a Threat Actor named "USDoD" leaked sensitive data from TransUnion. This won't be the last of "USDoD" today though. He also compromised NATO. We'll discuss that later. But first, TransUnion.
— vx-underground (@vxunderground) September 17, 2023
The leaked database, over 3GB in size, contains highly sensitive PII on 58,505… pic.twitter.com/RtCvsUVWrT
The name USDoD is well known in the cyber security sector, it was also listed in the indictment for the notorious owner of the BreachForums cybercrime forum Pompompurin. vx-underground pointed out that they are believed to be behind many other high-profile security breaches.
Recently, The multinational aerospace corporation Airbus announced that it is investigating a data leak after cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock reported that a hacker posted information on thousands of the company’s vendors to the dark web.
“USDoD” announced he had gained access to an Airbus web portal by compromising the account of a Turkish airline employee.
The hacker claimed to have details on thousands of Airbus vendors. The threat actors obtained the personal information of 3,200 individuals associated with Airbus vendors, exposed data include names, job titles, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers.
In December 2022, the FBI’s InfraGard US Critical Infrastructure Intelligence portal was hacked and a database containing the contact details of more than 80,000 high-profile private sector individuals was offered for sale by USDoD on the Breached cybercrime forum.
After the law enforcement shutdown of “Breached” forum, its members, including “USDoD,” moved to other platforms such as “BreachForums.”
“USDoD” posted two threads on this new forum, one to announce they have joined the notorious ransomware group Ransomed. In the second threat, the hacker exposed the personal information of 3,200 sensitive Airbus vendors. USDoD also warned that Lockheed Martin and Raytheon might be the next targets.
“Threat actors typically refrain from revealing their intrusion techniques, however in this exceptionally rare leak, “USDoD” revealed they gained access to Airbus’s data by exploiting “employee access from a Turkish Airline”.” reported Hudson Rock. “Using this information, Hudson Rock researchers succeeded to trace the mentioned employee access — a Turkish computer infected with an info-stealing malware in August 2023.”
According to the researchers, the computer of the victim was likely infected with the RedLine stealer after he attempted to download a pirated version of the Microsoft .NET framework.
Update September 9, 2023
Below a statement from TransUnion
TransUnion is aware of some limited online activity alleging that data obtained from multiple entities, including TransUnion, will be released. Immediately upon discovering these assertions, we partnered with outside cybersecurity and forensic experts to launch a thorough investigation. At this time, we and our internal and external experts have found no indication that TransUnion systems have been breached or that data has been exfiltrated from our environment.
Through our investigation, we have found that multiple aspects of the messages – including the data, formatting, and fields – do not match the data content or formats at TransUnion, indicating that any such data came from a third party.
Data protection is top priority at TransUnion. We take seriously any assertions regarding our information security and will continue to closely monitor this situation.
The statement is available here:
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