The Justice Department has charged two men, Connor Moucka and John Binns, in connection with a massive data breach affecting AT&T, Ticketmaster, and over 150 other corporations. The charges stem from hacking into a third-party cloud data storage company, Snowflake, and at least 10 other computer networks. The indictment alleges that Moucka and Binns extracted over 50 billion records, including sensitive personal information such as phone call and text message logs, banking details, and Social Security numbers. While the content of the calls and texts was not stolen, the breach provided the hackers with enough data to extort victims.
The two men are accused of extorting at least three victims out of 36 bitcoins, roughly $2.5 million, over the course of nearly a year. AT&T confirmed in July that its systems were breached in April, resulting in the theft of data from 109 million customer accounts, including call and text records from 2022. The indictment identifies the telecommunications giant as “Victim-2,” though it does not explicitly name AT&T. Moucka, who was arrested in Canada, is known by several online aliases, while Binns, previously arrested in Turkey, went by other online names.
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