Brazilian Federal Police Arrests Suspect Likely Belonging to LAPSUS$ Hacking Group

The Brazilian Federal Police has arrested a suspect, likely part of the hacking group LAPSUS$, responsible for numerous attacks on big companies like Nvidia, Samsung, 2K Games, Uber, and many others.

LAPSUS$ gained much attention in the past year because the group targeted large companies, compromising their networks and infrastructure with relative ease. While their primary approach was through social engineering, they also took advantage of any security misconfigurations they found during their intrusions.

The recent arrest in Feira de Santana, Brazil, is part of Operation Dark Cloud launched in August that started following attacks on the Ministry of Health and dozens of other bodies and entities of the Federal Government, including the Ministry of Economy, Comptroller General of the Union and the Federal Highway Police.

“The investigations began last December, when the Federal Police became aware that the cloud environment of the Ministry of Health had been attacked,” the Federal Police said in a press release. “At the time, the attackers deleted files, data and instances from the attacked folder, even leading to the compromise of the website connectus.saude.gov.br, responsible for the National Vaccination Certificate.”

“After the attack, when trying to access the Ministry of Health website (www.saude.gov.br), users found a message stating that system data had been copied and deleted and was in the hands of the invading group.”

LAPSUS$ started its operations in South America, hitting various systems such as Empresa Brasileira de Correios e Telégrafos, Localiza Rent a Car, and numerous other companies. Eventually, the group shifted its focus to companies from Europe and North America, including Electronic Arts, Samsung, Nvidia, Microsoft, and others.

Earlier this year, City of London Police arrested a few suspects believed to have ties with the LAPSUS$ group. And, just a couple of months ago, one of those suspects was arrested again under suspicions that he’s behind the Rockstar Games and Uber hacks.