A report from an FBI informant filed in 2017 has revealed the existence of an alleged “personal hacker” in the employ of human trafficker and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The name of the hacker has been redacted, alongside many other details provided by the informant, but otherwise, the document provides in detail the activities of the individual.
“[REDACTED] was Epstein’s personal hacker. [REDACTED] was an Italian citizen born in Calabria who developed zero-day exploits and offensive cyber tools and sold the tools to governments. [REDACTED] established the Saudi government’s cyber surveillance program. [REDACTED] sold a zero-day to Hezbollah. [REDACTED] was known as the first person to hack and find vulnerabilities in Blackberries and iOS,” the informant’s report said.
“He was also known for finding Firefox vulnerabilities. [REDACTED] surrounded himself with powerful friends like Epstein; he leveraged his connections with his billionaire friends. [REDACTED] former company, [REDACTED], was acquired by CrowdStrike in fall 2017, and [REDACTED] was currently a Vice President there. [REDACTED] had three billionaire backers: [REDACTED], Jeffrey Epstein, and [REDACTED]. [REDACTED] provided the company’s seed money; [REDACTED] had a Japanese company called [REDACTED].”
According to the informant, the hacker had links to several other European hackers and was connected to organised crime and terrorist organisations.
“[REDACTED] was very good at finding vulnerabilities. [REDACTED] was friends with ‘old school’ European hackers. One ‘friend’ was a hacker named ‘[REDACTED]’ (phonetic, ‘PH’). Another friend was [REDACTED],” the statement said.
“[REDACTED] received a trunk of cash from Hezbollah when [REDACTED] was in Italy; [REDACTED] drove the money to Switzerland and deposited it in another ba[REDACTED] owned a theatre company in California and he used the theatre company to launder his zero-day money.”
The document goes on to outline how the individual allegedly “sold his exploits” to both the UK and US governments, but not to Asian countries, as he was – according to the FBI’s informant – deeply racist.
While the name of the alleged ‘personal hacker’ was redacted, enough details remain to help piece together his identity.
Who was Jeffrey Epstein’s personal hacker?
According to several sources, including the International Cyber Digest, the individual referred to in the FBI report is Vincenzo Iozzo, the Calabrian-born founder of mobile security company Iperlane, which was acquired by CrowdStrike in 2017.
Iozzo held the position of senior director at CrowdStrike until 2021 and is currently the CEO of identity security firm SlashID.
Iozzo’s name appears in several other Epstein documents, including a 2015 email where Iozzo is seen trying to get Epstein to attend the Black Hat hacking conference. According to his LinkedIn page, Iozzo has been a board member of Black Hat since 2011.
Cyber Daily has reached out to Iozzo for comment.
CrowdStrike told Cyber Daily that any questions relating to Iozzo “should be directed to Vincenzo, as we did not acquire his company until the end of 2017 and he has not worked here since 2021”.
David Hollingworth
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.