Cyber Threat Actor: ProtoWave

ProtoWave is a hacker groupknown by that alias and has been publicly linked to Brazil. In May 2015 the group altered the content of the official website of Brazilian mixed martial artist Vitor Vieira Belfort, replacing it with a notice that displayed an English phrase accompanied by Japanese characters reading “I am a beast looking at the sky in thousands of eyes,” prefixed by the tag “Hacked by ProtoWave!”. The website remained inaccessible at the time of reporting. No explanatory motive was included in the notice, and contemporaneous reporting did not reveal any clear reason for targeting Belfort’s online presence.

Open sources also connect ProtoWave to an April 2015 alteration of the website belonging to the Brazilian football star Ronaldinho, indicating a pattern of focusing on prominent athletes from the country. After compromising a target, the group routinely supplies a link to a zone‑h mirror that serves as proof of the compromise, a practice observed in the Belfort incident. Targets to date have been high‑profile individuals in the Brazilian sports sector, with no indication of broader industry or governmental focus in the available reports.

No public attribution to a state sponsor, criminal consortium, or other affiliations has been made for ProtoWave. The broader strategic objectives—whether financial, espionage‑related, or purely disruptive—remain unspecified in the sources. Based on the publicly available reporting, no further details about the group’s structure, capabilities, or future intentions are currently known.