Hackers—hope to defect to Russia? Don’t Google “defecting to Russia.”

Summary

To the casual observer, cybercriminals can look like swashbuckling geniuses. They possess technical skills formidable enough to penetrate the networks of the biggest companies on the planet. They cover their tracks using technology that is arcane to most people—VPNs, encrypted chat apps, onion routing, aliases in dark web forums. They talk trash, extorting corporate ransoms in cryptocurrency, and they aim high, not flinching even at the prospect of stealing data on US presidential candidates. But when they're caught, cybercriminals can look less like swashbuckling geniuses and more like judgment-impaired morons. It's incredible how many of these guys will simply write down all the bad stuff they plan to do. (Haven't they heard of the "Stringer Bell rule"?) They might do so in cocky chats with co-conspirators. They might shoot off emails to addresses that—they believe—belong to foreign intelligence agencies. If none of that is dumb enough, they might just search up their own criminal plans. Or they might do all three. Which brings us to Cameron John Wagenius. The genius Wagenius was an active-duty US soldier stationed at bases in South Korea and Texas. In 2024, he helped hack telecom companies and obtained call record data on Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, which he posted in November under the "kiberphant0m" name. He also tried to extort the telecoms he hacked, promising to release more data if they didn't pay him a ransom. In one note to a major telecom, Wagenius asked for $500,000 and added: Lets start off, a little thing you should know about me. I get what I want and when I don't get what I want in my own timeframes that I set I will do what I say. I don't care if I don't receive the money involved in the extortions. I already made your samples and data on [REDACTED] available to everybody on breachforums. I will leak much much much more, literally all of it. But Wagenius, who is now 21, wasn't nearly as sneaky as he seemed to believe; the US government targeted...