The Department of Justice (DOJ) has linked the arrest of a serving U.S. Army soldier in December to a massive hack of AT&T and Verizon last year, according to a court filing on Friday.
Newsweek has reached out to the DOJ via online email form for comment.
Why It Matters
The hack was one of the most wide-reaching attacks of 2024, with more than 160 companies impacted and saw the theft of millions of phone records from telecom giants AT&T and Verizon. Victims also included major corporations such as LendingTree, Santander Bank, and Ticketmaster. The hackers reportedly exploited weak cybersecurity measures, including the lack of multi-factor authentication, to siphon customer and corporate data using stolen passwords infected with malware
This latest incident adds to a growing list of cybersecurity issues that remain a growing concern, as individuals and U.S. adversaries increase their hacking attempts.
What To Know
U.S prosecutors on Friday linked Cameron John Wagenius, who was arrested on December 20 in Texas on charges of unlawfully transferring confidential phone records, to being connected to an earlier case involving two alleged hackers, Connor Moucka and John Binns.
Wagenius, who was later extradited to Washington state, is accused of being connected to the pair who were charged with breaching cloud-computing platform Snowflake, resulting in the theft of sensitive data from numerous corporate clients.
Court filings revealed on Friday that the stolen records included nearly all customer call data from AT&T and a significant number of Verizon’s customer logs.
This marks the first time prosecutors have publicly tied Wagenius to the Snowflake data breaches, an attack that compromised sensitive information from over 160 companies.
Security journalist Brian Krebs had previously connected Wagenius to the Snowflake hacks. Krebs reported in November that Wagenius allegedly threatened to release stolen data, including call logs of Vice President Kamala Harris and President-elect Donald Trump if Canadian authorities did not release Moucka.
The breached data encompassed a vast range of sensitive information, including Social Security numbers, International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers, payment details, and personal identification records. These breaches in corporate cloud security came at a time when reliance on cloud services was surging.
Wagenius, 20, was a soldier at Fort Cavazos, formerly known as Fort Hood, in Killeen, Texas. His Facebook page, which boasts 27 friends, is mostly related to his time in the Army, with photos and videos of guns and what appears to be him in training.
It’s unclear if Wagenius’ role in the Army helped him in carrying out the alleged crimes.
Cybersecurity remains a concern as the U.S. Treasury Department has recently sanctioned a Beijing-based cybersecurity company for its alleged involvement in multiple hacking incidents targeting critical U.S. infrastructure.
The sanctions, announced earlier this month by the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, cite Integrity Technology Group in a series of attacks attributed to Flax Typhoon, a state-sponsored hacking campaign allegedly linked to the Chinese government.
What People Are Saying
U.S. Attorney Tessa Gorman told the Seattle court on Friday, “Both cases arise from the same computer intrusion and extortion and include some of the same stolen victim information,” and as such, “these cases rely on overlapping evidentiary material and legal process and arguably present common questions of law and fact.”
Jen Easterly, the outgoing director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said during an event in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday with the nonprofit Foundation for Defense of Democracies: “I think frankly we’re going to see more and more serious threats from our foreign adversaries, and we have to anticipate it and be able to deal with it as we did for the 2024 election.”
John Ratcliffe, Trump’s nominee to be CIA director, said Wednesday during his Senate confirmation hearing: “We have the best code makers and code breakers in the world. But if China gets to quantum computing before we do, that’s a real problem.”
What Happens Next
As Wagenius remains in custody in Washington state following a court order on January 8, federal authorities are continuing to unravel the full extent of the cyberattacks impact as they pursue charges against those allegedly involved.
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