Vinny Troia

Vinny Troia
Education	PhD[citation needed]
Alma mater	Capella University, Western Governors University[citation needed]
Occupation(s)	Ethical hacker and cybersecurity researcher[1][2]
Website	www.vinnytroia.com

Vincenzo Troia is an American ethical hacker and cybersecurity researcher who is known for reporting and identifying The Dark Overlord (hacker group) and hacker pompompurin, who was the owner-operator of the website BreachForums and was also involved in the 2021 FBI email hacking.^[3][4] He is also known for disclosing the Shanghai police database leak in 2022.^[5][6]

Troia also serves as CEO and principal security researcher at Night Lion Security, a cyber-security firm based in the US^[7] and founded a threat intelligence firm named Shadowbyte.^[1]

In 2018, Troia found a data leak of nearly 340 million detailed records about individual people available on a publicly accessible server of Exactis.^[8][9]

In 2019, he found a data breach in People Data Labs where records of personal data, including email addresses, employers, locations, job titles, names, phone numbers and social media profiles of 1.2 billion people were exposed.^[10][11]

In 2020, Troia identified and wrote a report on an entire underground cybercrime economy built on the stealing of reselling of video game passwords.^[12] The white paper published by Troia and Night Lion Security outline the process by which hackers make money by stealing and reselling Fortnite video game cosmetics, some making nearly a million dollars per year.^[13] After gaining access to a victim's account, most often by using common or reused passwords, the account's contents are then stolen and resold on an underground black market valued at nearly 1 billion dollars annually.^[14]

Publication

Troia is the author of the book "Hunting Cyber Criminals: A Hacker’s Guide to Online Intelligence Gathering Tools and Techniques" (Wiley Books), which illustrates various investigative tools and techniques used to track down and investigate cybercriminals using Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) gathering tools and techniques.^[15] The book provides a detailed account of Troia's investigation into cyber criminal hacking group The Dark Overlord.^[16]

Troia's book provides evidence and analysis to support claims that the masterminds behind The Dark Overlord cybercrime group are two teenagers living in Calgary, Canada. Evidence provided in the book, as well as a subsequent report published by Troia and Night Lion Security, link the members of The Dark Overlord hacking group to other "database focused" hacking groups such as ShinyHunters and GnosticPlayers, along with people such as Conor Brian Fitzpatrick, also known as pompompurin, who owned BreachForums.^[17]

References