U.S. Soldier AT&T Extortion: 70‑Month Prison Term and $295K Restitution

U.S. Soldier AT&T Extortion Case Details

A 22‑year‑old Army specialist stationed in South Korea pleaded guilty to hacking AT&T, Verizon and other carriers, stealing metadata on more than 100 million customers. The court in Seattle sentenced him to ↓ 70 months in federal prison and ordered ↓ $294,978 in restitution.

Operating under the alias “Kiberphant0m,” Cameron John Wagenius collaborated with three alleged co‑conspirators to exploit weak cloud credentials at Snowflake, which has since mandated MFA. He boasted on underground forums that he had accessed call logs for high‑profile figures, including the president‑elect and the vice president, and threatened to leak alleged NSA schematics.

“We don’t often get leads where there’s an active‑duty soldier with a secret clearance who’s creating hacking tools and trafficking in data,” said Paul Russell, resident agent in charge at the Defense Criminal Investigative Service.

The investigation was a joint effort of the Reuters-cited agencies: the FBI, Army CID, Secret Service and DCIS. Wagenius’s accomplice, Kenneth Schuchman, previously ran the Satori IoT botnet, and two other partners remain at large.

While incarcerated, Wagenius attempted to probe the Bureau of Prisons network, using inmate email accounts to request AI‑generated exploits for CVE‑2023‑45208 and even asking how to craft a makeshift antenna inside a prison. He framed the queries as research for a book, a classic “prompt injection” technique.

Despite the massive data haul, the extortion yielded only about $1,500 in cash. The case underscores lingering vulnerabilities in telecom infrastructure, a concern amplified after the recent pandemic surge in remote communications.

For a deeper look at the legal ramifications, see Bloomberg.

Reported by: Nova Stirling

Aerospace & Space Tech Correspondent