A former US Army soldier has been sentenced to 70 months in prison for hacking telecoms companies, stealing sensitive records, and trying to extort more than $1 million from his victims.
Cameron John Wagenius, 22, carried out the campaign while serving on active duty. He pleaded guilty in March 2025 to unlawfully transferring confidential phone records, then admitted conspiracy to commit wire fraud, computer-related extortion, and aggravated identity theft in a separate case that July.
Court documents say Wagenius conspired with three others to obtain credentials for the protected networks of at least ten organizations between April 2023 and December 2024. During that period, he was stationed in South Korea and Texas.
Read more…
Source: The Register News
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- New Jersey hospital paid ransomware gang $670K to prevent data leak
October 3, 2020
University Hospital New Jersey in Newark, New Jersey, paid a $670,000 ransomware demand this month to prevent the publishing of 240 GB of stolen data, including patient info. The attack on the hospital occurred in early September by a ransomware operation known as SunCrypt, who infiltrates a network, steals unencrypted files, and then encrypts all of ...
- Ransomware: Gangs are shifting targets and upping their ransom demands
October 2, 2020
Ransomware attacks continue to grow, according to data from IBM, which also suggests that ransomware gangs are upping their ransomware demands and getting more sophisticated about how they calculate the ransom they try to extort. The number of ransomware attacks IBM’s Security X-Force Incident Response team were called in to deal with tripled in the second ...
- Researchers Mixed on Sanctions for Ransomware Negotiators
October 2, 2020
Ransomware negotiators may have to pay up in new ways if they intercede with cybercriminals on companies’ behalf. Several researchers weighed in on the wisdom of the move, with mixed reactions. The U.S. Department of the Treasury said Thursday that companies that facilitate ransomware payments to cyber-actors on behalf of victims may face sanctions for encouraging ...
- Emotet malware takes part in the 2020 U.S. elections
October 2, 2020
Emotet is now taking part in the United States 2020 Presidential election with a new spam campaign pretending to be from the Democratic National Convention’s Team Blue initiative. When the Emotet gang sends out spam, their main goal is to convince recipients to open the attached malicious document. This is usually done through email themes that ...
- Egregor Ransomware Threatens ‘Mass-Media’ Release of Corporate Data
October 2, 2020
A freshly discovered family of ransomware called Egregor has been spotted in the wild, using a tactic of siphoning off corporate information and threatening a “mass-media” release of it before encrypting all files. Egregor is an occult term meant to signify the collective energy or force of a group of individuals, especially when the individuals are ...
- Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 Discovers 27 New Vulnerabilities Across Microsoft Products
October 2, 2020
Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 threat researchers have been credited with discovering 27 new vulnerabilities addressed by the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), as part of its last nine months of security update releases. Vulnerabilities The Microsoft vulnerabilities discovered included 27 vulnerabilities rated “important,” including Remote Code Execution, Privilege Elevation, Information Disclosure and one Denial of Service ...