U.S. prosecutors formally linked the December arrest of an active-duty U.S. Army soldier to the theft of U.S. phone records from AT&T and Verizon last year.
US Army communications specialist Cameron John Wagenius was arrested by authorities in Texas on December 20. Two-page grand jury charge brief The US serviceman was accused of two counts of illegally transferring confidential phone records. Wagenius was later extradited to Washington State.
Friday in a new courthouse. US prosecutors have confirmed that the charges against Wagenius are related to earlier charges against two hackers accused by the US government, Connor Moucka and John Binns. Multiple intrusions at cloud computing company Snowflake It has seen several thefts of data stored on its customer accounts. Snowflake customers whose data was stolen include AT&T, which had “almost all” of its customer call records through 2024, and Verizon, whose large caches of customer call records were extracted from its Snowflake account.
US Attorney Tessa Gorman told the Seattle court. “Both cases arose out of the same computer intrusion and extortion and involved some of the same stolen victims' information,” because “these cases rely on overlapping evidence and legal process and present the same questions.”
It was the first public acknowledgment by prosecutors that Wagenius' charges were linked to last year's breach at cloud computing company Snowflake. Security reporter Brian Krebs First presented at the link. Between the Wagenius and Snowflake hacks in November; Later, the news was lost. Arrest of Wagenius.
The Snowflake account hack became one of the most widespread cyber attacks of the past year. AT&T, LendingTree, Santander Bank, Certificate Masterand at least 160 other companies. The hackers allegedly stole large banks of sensitive corporate information, some of which were stored on Snowflake, the companies' personally identifiable information. Using passwords stolen from employee computers with malware.. Most affected Snowflake customers were not using multi-factor authentication, which Snowflake's customers did not require at the time.
As Krebs reports, Canadian authorities arrested Moucka earlier.Wagenius made a post on a popular cybercrime forum seeking access to the call logs of Vice President Kamala Harris and then-President-elect Donald Trump, threatening to leak all the stolen files unless Moucka was released.
Snowflake hackers steal personal information; cell phone and IMEI numbers; Dates of birth postal and email addresses; Passwords social security numbers; government-issued identification numbers; Prosecutors allege he stole information that included payment card and bank account numbers.
An arrest warrant was issued for Wagenius on January 8 and he is being held in Washington state.