# Vinny Troia

Vincenzo "Vinny" Troia is an American cybersecurity researcher who is known for investigating high profile data breaches and dark web hacking groups, and is the author "Hunting Cyber Criminals". Troia has published research about dark web hacking groups such as The Dark Overlord and Shiny Hunters.

## Career

Troia serves as owner and CEO of Night Lion Security, a cyber-security firm based in the US., and founded a threat intelligence firm Shadowbyte, which was sold in 2022 to Core4ce, a national security contracting firm
In 2018, Troia found a data leak of nearly 340 million detailed records about individual people available on a publicly accessible server of Exactis.
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.
In July 2020, one of Troia's own websites, Data Viper, was hacked. The site contained over 8,200 databases from data breaches.
In August 2020, Troia wrote a report on the underground cybercrime economy built on the stealing of reselling of video game passwords. The white paper outlines the process by which hackers make money by stealing and reselling Fortnite video game cosmetics, some making nearly a million dollars per year.
In November 2021, hacker Pompompurin, admin of the Dark Web data sharing forum BreachForums, publicly harassed Troia by hacking into the FBI email servers and sending hundreds of thousands of emails to people accusing him of being a part of The Dark Overlord hacking group. In addition, Troia claimed that they had previously performed a DDoS attack one of Troia's websites and also hacked the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's blog to create a fake blog post about him.

## Publications

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. The book provides a detailed account of Troia's investigation into cyber criminal hacking group The Dark Overlord.
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, attempts to link the members of The Dark Overlord hacking group to other "database focused" hacking groups such as ShinyHunters and GnosticPlayers.

## Early Career (Music)

From 2002-2010, Vinny Troia started and ran Curvve Recordings, an electronic dance music record label. Curvve debuted with remixes of Ultra Nate's "Free", a previosuly #1 single on the Billboard dance club charts. Troia's remix of free, alongside Oscar G and Trendroid, rose to #23 on the Billboard club chart.
In 2003, Curvve released remixes of Jody Watley's "Looking for a New Love", which rose to #13 on the US billboard dance charts, followed by Vinny Troia's own single "Flow", with Jaidene Veda (2006), which reached #24 on the top Billboard Dance Songs chart. In 2007, Curvve released "One Day My Love" by N'Dea Davenport, which rose to #10 on US Dance chart.
Troia's second single, "Do For Love" featuring Jaidene Veda and with remix by Dave Aude, reached #40 on the US top billboard dance charts in 2010. Troia has also worked with other known artists like Gareth Emery, David Guetta, Dave Aude, Christopher Lawrence, D:Fuse, and Starkillers.