A 19-year-old named Remington Ogletree hacked two unnamed telecommunications companies and a U.S. financial institution, causing $4 million in damage through phishing emails. Ogletree is said to have worked with a hacking group called Scattered Spider. This group was also known for previous attacks on Coinbase, Riot Games Inc. and MGM Resorts International , among others.
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Ogletree used his access to telecommunications companies to send phishing links to millions of users in an attempt to steal cryptocurrency. He also had access to incoming and outgoing calls and messages of various targets.
The case against Ogletree has only just been made public by authorities. He had been active for some time and sent 8.5 million messages to a European country in October 2023. These texts were disguised as messages from cryptocurrency exchanges or video game companies.
Ogletree also managed to trick 12 employees working at a US financial institution into giving him access to their accounts, which he used to steal sensitive data.
See also: New phishing attack uses corrupted Word documents to evade detection
This is not the only phishing attack on telecommunications companies in recent times. The largest incident – that we know of – involved Chinese hackers gaining access to several US telecommunications networks. These hackers were able to access a large amount of confidential data and even tried to spy on politicians and government officials, which they succeeded in doing, at least partially.
Moreover, US officials say that these hackers are still inside telecommunications networks and no one knows how long it will take to find and remove them. T-Mobile claimed that the Chinese hackers were not able to affect its systems and that the company even kicked suspected agents off its network.
See also: Protect your digital identity from phishing attacks
While the names of the two compromised telecom networks remain under wraps for now, we'll likely hear more about them once the case is settled. The Ogletree case only further demonstrates how easy it can be for some people to gain unauthorized access to telecom companies.
Source: phonearena
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