A 19 year old named Remington Ogletree breached two unnamed telecom firms and a U.S. financial institution to cause $4 million in damage. Ogletree is said to have worked with a hacker group that goes by the name Scattered Spider. This group has also been known for previous attacks on Coinbase, Riot Games Inc. and MGM Resorts International amidst others.
Ogletree made use of his access to telecom networks to send out phishing links to millions of users in an attempt to steal cryptocurrency. He also had access to incoming and outgoing calls and texts of various targets.
The case against Ogletree has only now been made public by the authorities. He had been at this for quite some time and sent 8.5 million texts across a European country back in October of 2023. These texts were disguised as messages from a cryptocurrency exchange or video game company.
Ogletree was also able to trick 12 employees working at a U.S. financial institution to give him access to their accounts which he used to steal sensitive data. Clearly this guy had the charisma to back up his brains.
Ogletree isn’t the only one interested in these telecom companies. | Image credit — Bloomberg
This is far from the only attack on telecom firms in recent times. The biggest incident — that we know of — is Chinese hackers gaining access to multiple U.S. telecom networks. These hackers were able to access a ton of confidential data and even tried to spy on politicians and government officials, something they succeeded at doing even if partially.
Furthermore, US officials say that these hackers are still inside telecom networks and no one knows how long it will take to find and evict them. T-Mobile claimed that the Chinese hackers were not able to impact its systems and that the company even kicked suspicious agents off of its network.
While the names of the two breached telecom networks are being kept under wraps for now we’ll likely hear more about this when the case is settled. The Ogletree ordeal only further showcases how easy it can be for some people to gain unauthorized access to telecom companies.
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Abdullah loves smartphones, Virtual Reality, and audio gear. Though he covers a wide range of news his favorite is always when he gets to talk about the newest VR venture or when Apple sets the industry ablaze with another phenomenal release.
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