Fired hacker twins incriminate selves by forgetting to end Teams recording
▼ Summary
– Muneeb and Sohaib Akhter deleted 96 US government databases an hour after being fired by federal IT contractor Opexus, which had just learned of their prior cyberfraud convictions.
– The brothers are portrayed as bumbling criminals who relied on AI to try to cover their tracks, but their efforts failed to prevent federal prosecution.
– A verbatim transcript of the brothers’ conversation during the deletion spree existed, puzzling the author about how the government obtained it.
– The answer came from a court filing showing the brothers accidentally recorded themselves by forgetting to stop recording the Teams meeting in which they were fired.
– The recording was a self-inflicted mistake, revealing the duo’s incompetence rather than sophisticated government surveillance.
Perhaps you recall the story of Muneeb and Sohaib Akhter, the 34-year-old twin brothers we covered earlier this week. They had enough technical skill to pull off years of petty theft, like stealing airline miles. But what truly sealed their fate was deleting 96 U.S. government databases within an hour of being fired last year by their federal IT contractor, Opexus. The company had just discovered both brothers had prior prison sentences for cyberfraud.
These two come across less like criminal masterminds and more like bumbling oafs, or as we put it, a pair of galumphing galoots. They thought asking an AI how to cover their tracks would keep them out of federal prison. It did not.
One small puzzle I encountered while writing that piece was how the government obtained a verbatim transcript of everything the brothers said during their hour-long deletion spree. The twins lived together in Arlington, Virginia, so it made sense they might be chatting in the same room rather than texting or using instant messages. But how did the government capture the audio? Was it a supersecret software bug? Corporate spyware on their company laptops? An FBI agent hiding in the bushes with a microphone?
I could not figure it out, and the answer was not in any court document I read. Then a helpful source pointed me to the truth today. It is buried in a court filing with the uninviting title, “UNITED STATES’ RESPONSE IN OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT’S MOTION TO REVOKE THE DETENTION ORDER.”
That title practically begs you to skip it. But the file is fascinating. And it reveals that our galumphing galoots were secretly recorded by themselves. By accident. Because they forgot to stop recording the Teams meeting in which they were fired.
You really cannot make this stuff up.
(Source: Ars Technica)
