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AT&T employees took bribes to plant malware on the company's network
AT&T employees took bribes to unlock millions of smartphones, and to install malware and unauthorized hardware on the company's network, the Department of Justice said yesterday.
These details come from a DOJ case opened against Muhammad Fahd, a 34-year-old man from Pakistan, and his co-conspirator, Ghulam Jiwani, believed to be deceased.
The DOJ charged the two with paying more than $1 million in bribes to several AT&T employees at the company's Mobility Customer Care call center in Bothell, Washington.
The bribery scheme lasted from at least April 2012 until September 2017. Initially, the two Pakistani men bribed AT&T employees to unlock expensive iPhones so they could be used outside AT&T's network.
[...] This initial stage of the scheme last for about a year, until April 2013, when several employees left or were fired by AT&T.
That's when Fahd changed tactics and bribed AT&T employees to install malware on AT&T's network at the Bothell call center. Between April and October 2013, this initial malware collected data on how AT&T infrastructure worked.
According to court documents unsealed yesterday, this malware appears to be a keylogger, having the ability "to gather confidential and proprietary information regarding the structure and functioning of AT&T's internal protected computers and applications.
The DOJ said Fahd and his co-conspirator then created a second malware strain that leveraged the information acquired through the first. This second malware used AT&T employee credentials to perform automated actions on AT&T's internal application to unlock phone's at Fahd's behest, without needing to interact with AT&T employees every time.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 06 2019, @07:23PM (6 children)
Competition?
I don't think the NSA wiretap black-box closets went away or anything.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @07:34PM (1 child)
The problem, according to AT&T, is that the company lost $5M per year in fees (whereas the NSA pays their monthly "access" fees).
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday August 07 2019, @01:52AM
The problem was, according to AT&T, that customers saved $5million per year by not having to pay AT&T's extortionate unlocking fees.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 06 2019, @08:01PM (3 children)
The NSA black boxes are "O.K., they work for the government, G-men installed 'em." Muhammad Fahd and his deceased associate, no so much.
More interesting is: who was backing Fahd with the money for the bribes?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 06 2019, @08:08PM (2 children)
They work for the Pakistani government. What's the problem?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 06 2019, @08:38PM (1 child)
They weren't Russian.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @04:26AM
They could be really tanned North Koreans though. Anyone did the Kimchi test on them?