The Obscurest Epoch is Today
Summary: Krebs reports that a booter.tw database showed the denial-of-service attack on his site was paid for by an account named "countonme," and that the site's proprietor, "Askaa," said a hacker called Phobia had broken into that account to frame its owner. An anonymous source tied the attacks to a four-person Xbox Live group called Team Hype, whose members allegedly used Social Security numbers from ssndob.ru to hijack gamertags from Microsoft employees, and Krebs traced the Phobia handle to 20-year-old Ryan Stevenson of Milford, Connecticut, who acknowledged involvement in the 2012 Mat Honan iCloud hack.
Bottom line: The same Social Security numbers sold on ssndob.ru were used to social-engineer phone companies and Microsoft support into handing over Xbox accounts, then to reset Krebs's Cox email password and pay $3,000 on his account with stolen credit cards - a chain that ran from a data-broker breach to a reporter's home being SWATed.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Cybercrime & Law Enforcement
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