US Army Soldier Accused of Extorting AT&T and Verizon After Data Breaches
A 20-year-old US Army soldier based at Fort Hood, Texas, has been arrested and indicted, suspected of being the cybercriminal known as Kiberphant0m. He is accused of extorting money from AT&T and Verizon following significant data breaches at both companies.
The soldier, Cameron John Wagenius, faces two counts of unlawful transfer of confidential phone records. While the indictment lacks specific details, information from Wagenius's mother connected him to Connor Riley Moucka ("Judische"), a Canadian cybercriminal arrested in October for similar crimes involving data stolen from companies using the cloud service Snowflake. Learn more about security challenges.
The arrest of Wagenius appears linked to two major incidents: a massive data breach at AT&T and the theft of Verizon call logs. In the AT&T breach, hackers obtained personal details of nearly all AT&T customers, including call records and, in some cases, approximate locations. AT&T reportedly paid a $373,000 ransom in Bitcoin after initially being asked for $1 million. Read more about data breaches and their impact.
The Verizon breach involved call logs from push-to-talk (PTT) customers, primarily US government agencies and emergency responders. Kiberphant0m reportedly offered these logs for sale and also offered a SIM-swapping service targeting Verizon PTT customers. Stay informed about the latest security updates.
The case against Wagenius has been moved to the Western District of Washington in Seattle.