Forest Global Training Partners

Cyber Risks · Krebs on Security

U.S. Soldier Gets 70 Months in Prison for AT&T, Verizon Extortions

Summary: Cameron John Wagenius, 22, a U.S. Army soldier stationed in South Korea who operated as "Kiberphant0m," was sentenced in Seattle to 70 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $294,978 in restitution after pleading guilty to hacking telecom companies and stealing call and text metadata for more than 100 million AT&T customers in 2024. Working with alleged co-conspirators, he pulled data from Snowflake customers that had exposed credentials and no multi-factor authentication, claimed intrusions at more than a dozen telecom companies including Verizon's Push-to-Talk business, and extorted victims with threats to publish the data.

Bottom line: The government's sentencing memo says Wagenius made only about $1,500 from selling the stolen data, yet the breach touched more than 100 million AT&T customers and AT&T had already paid the group a $370,000 Bitcoin ransom. While detained awaiting sentencing, he used other inmates' email accounts to ask an AI tool for Windows privilege-escalation CVEs and working exploit scripts, and to research escaping prison.

Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗

Topics
Identity & Access Management
Related