A Kansas Metropolis man has pleaded responsible to hacking a number of organizations to promote his cybersecurity providers, the U.S. Division of Justice introduced on Wednesday.
32-year-old Nicholas Michael Kloster was indicted final 12 months for hacking into the networks of three organizations in 2024, together with a well being membership and a Missouri nonprofit company.
In keeping with court docket paperwork, Kloster accessed the programs of a well being membership that operates a number of gyms in Missouri after breaching a restricted space. Subsequent, he despatched an electronic mail to one of many health club chain’s homeowners, claiming he had hacked their community and providing his providers in the identical message, seemingly searching for to safe a cybersecurity consulting contract with the corporate.
“I managed to bypass the login for the safety cameras through the use of their seen IP addresses. I additionally gained entry to the GoogleFiber Router settings, which allowed me to make use of [redacted] to discover consumer accounts related to the area,” Kloster mentioned within the electronic mail. “If I can attain the information on a consumer’s laptop, it signifies potential for deeper system entry.”
He additionally mentioned in that electronic mail that he had “assisted over 30 small to medium-sized industrial companies within the Kansas Metropolis, Missouri space.”
Moreover submitting a contracting proposal to the health club proprietor, Kloster eliminated his {photograph} from the health club’s database, lowered his month-to-month health club membership charge to solely $1, and stole a workers member’s identify tag.
Weeks later, the defendant posted a screenshot on social media that displayed the health club’s safety digital camera system and indicated that he had gained management over it.
On Could 20, Kloster additionally allegedly breached the restricted premises of a nonprofit group, the place he used a boot disk to bypass authentication necessities and stole delicate info from a “protected laptop,” a system “utilized in or affecting interstate or international commerce or communication” as described by the DOJ.
Kloster used his entry to the nonprofit’s laptop to put in a digital personal community (VPN) and alter the passwords of a number of consumer accounts.
The defendant can also be accused of utilizing stolen bank card info from a 3rd firm, a former employer who fired Kloster on April 30, 2024, after he used the stolen firm bank cards to buy ‘hacking thumb drives’ designed to take advantage of weak programs.
Kloster is going through a potential sentence of as much as 5 years in federal jail with out parole, together with a positive of as much as $250,000, three years of supervised launch, and an order of restitution.
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