Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles this week unsealed criminal charges against five men alleged to be members of a hacking group responsible for dozens of cyber intrusions at major U.S. technology companies between 2021 and 2023, including LastPass, MailChimp, Okta, T-Mobile and Twilio.
Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter this week all took steps to crack down on users involved in trafficking hijacked user accounts across their platforms. The coordinated action seized hundreds of accounts the companies say have played a major role in facilitating the trade and often lucrative resale of compromised, highly sought-after usernames.
For at least the third time in its existence, OGUsers — a forum overrun with people looking to buy, sell and trade access to compromised social media accounts — has been hacked.
Two young men from the eastern United States have been hit with identity theft and conspiracy charges for allegedly stealing bitcoin and social media accounts by tricking employees at wireless phone companies into giving away credentials needed to remotely access and modify customer account information.
Three individuals have been charged for their alleged roles in the July 15 hack on Twitter, an incident that resulted in Twitter profiles for some of the world’s most recognizable celebrities, executives and public figures sending out tweets advertising a bitcoin scam.
The New York Times last week ran an interview with several young men who claimed to have had direct contact with those involved in last week’s epic hack against Twitter. These individuals said they were only customers of the person who had access to Twitter’s internal employee tools, and were not responsible for the actual intrusion or bitcoin scams that took place that day. But new information suggests that at least two of them operated a service that resold access to Twitter employees for the purposes of modifying or seizing control of prized Twitter profiles.
Ogusers[.]com — a forum popular among people involved in hijacking online accounts and conducting SIM swapping attacks to seize control over victims’ phone numbers — has itself been hacked, exposing the email addresses, hashed passwords, IP addresses and private messages for nearly 113,000 forum users.
Prosecutors in Northern California have charged two men with using unauthorized SIM swaps to steal and extort money from victims. One of the individuals charged allegedly used a hacker nickname belonging to a key figure in the underground who’s built a solid reputation hijacking mobile phone numbers for profit.
According to indictments unsealed this week, Tucson, Ariz. resident Ahmad Wagaafe Hared and Matthew Gene Ditman of Las Vegas were part of a group that specialized in tricking or bribing representatives at the major wireless providers into giving them control over phone numbers belonging to people they later targeted for extortion and theft.
A Connecticut man who’s earned “bug bounty” rewards and public recognition from top telecom companies for finding and reporting security holes in their Web sites secretly operated a service that leveraged these same flaws to sell their customers’ personal data, KrebsOnSecurity has learned.
An entrepreneur and virtual currency investor is suing AT&T for $224 million, claiming the wireless provider was negligent when it failed to prevent thieves from hijacking his mobile account and stealing millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies. Increasingly frequent, high-profile attacks like these are prompting some experts to say the surest way to safeguard one’s online accounts may be to disconnect them from the mobile providers entirely.
