U.S. prosecutors have charged an Illinois man with orchestrating a phishing operation that allowed him to hack the Snapchat accounts of practically 600 girls to steal non-public photographs and promote them on-line.
Between Might 2020 and February 2021, 26-year-old defendant Kyle Svara allegedly used numerous social engineering techniques to acquire victims’ emails, telephone numbers, and Snapchat usernames.
This information allowed Svara to achieve entry to their Snapchat accounts by texting greater than 4,500 targets requesting entry codes whereas impersonating Snap representatives, efficiently harvesting the credentials of roughly 570 victims.
Svara allegedly accessed not less than 59 accounts with out permission and downloaded compromising photographs. After, he allegedly marketed his hacking companies on platforms together with Reddit, providing to “get into ladies snap accounts” for purchasers or commerce the stolen content material.
“He directed potential co-conspirators to succeed in out to him on different, safer channels just like the encrypted messaging software Kik,” in response to court docket paperwork.
One in every of his purchasers was Steve Waithe, a former Northeastern College observe and subject coach who employed Svara to hack the Snapchat accounts of scholars at Northeastern College and members of Northeastern’s Ladies’s Observe and Discipline or Soccer groups.
Waithe was sentenced in March 2024 to 5 years in jail for sextortion, cyberstalking, and cyber fraud after focusing on not less than 128 girls.
Past paid hacking jobs, prosecutors stated that Svara additionally independently focused college students at Colby School in Maine and ladies in Plainfield, Illinois.
Svara faces fees of aggravated identification theft, wire fraud, pc fraud, and making false statements associated to youngster pornography and can seem in federal court docket in Boston on February 4th.
The fees carry vital penalties, with aggravated identification theft requiring a minimal two-year sentence, whereas wire fraud permits as much as
20 years imprisonment. Laptop fraud and conspiracy fees additionally carry most five-year sentences, and the false statements cost carries a most of eight years.
Federal investigators are asking potential victims and anybody with extra details about the case to contact the FBI by way of this on-line kind.
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