TL;DR: A US Military soldier arrested in December for leaking the personal name logs of then-President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris has pleaded responsible to stealing telephone information from at the least two main US carriers. He faces as much as 20 years in jail if convicted.
In line with a submitting in a federal courtroom in Seattle, Cameron John Wagenius, a 20-year-old communications specialist stationed in South Korea, pleaded responsible to 2 counts of unlawfully transferring confidential telephone information. The submitting by Wagenius’ lawyer additionally revealed that the suspect faces as much as 10 years in jail for every of the 2 counts of knowledge leak and a effective of as much as $250,000.
Wagenius was arrested close to Fort Cavazos, Texas, on December 20 for trying to promote stolen telecom information from AT&T and Verizon on the darkish net. Following his arrest, federal authorities indicted him for “illegal switch of confidential telephone information info.” The indictment was filed within the US District Courtroom for the Western District of Texas in Waco, but it surely didn’t reveal the victims’ names and different particulars.
Krebs on Safety revealed extra details about Wagenius, together with his standing as a US soldier. The report additionally recognized him because the infamous cybercriminal who operated on the darkish net beneath the alias ‘Kiberphant0m.’
In line with investigators, Kiberphant0m had warned AT&T that he would launch prospects’ name logs except anyone from the corporate obtained in contact with him quickly. To point out he was severe, he launched a pattern of the stolen information. He additionally reportedly threatened to leak categorized US authorities name information, together with presidential name logs, if his calls for weren’t met.
Wagenius’ actions are believed to be associated to the hacking of cloud computing providers firm Snowflake, for which the feds indicted Alexander Connor Moucka and John Binns. The 2 are alleged to have netted round $2 million from the heist. In line with US legal professional Tessa Gorman, each the AT&T and Verizon hacks are a part of the “similar laptop intrusion and extortion and embody a number of the similar stolen sufferer info.”
In July 2024, AT&T introduced that hackers have been in a position to entry its buyer name and textual content information from 2022 via Snowflake. Fortuitously for the victims, the information didn’t embody social safety numbers, but it surely was nonetheless an enormous violation of privateness for a lot of subscribers.
Together with AT&T and Verizon, the Snowflake breaches resulted in hackers getting access to private information from round 160 firms, together with LendingTree, Santander Financial institution, Ticketmaster, and extra. Clients of Indian state-owned telecom agency BSNL are believed to have additionally been affected.
