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 yr for hacking into the networks of three organizations in 2024, together with a well being membership and a Missouri nonprofit company.
In line with courtroom paperwork, Kloster accessed the methods of a well being membership that operates a number of gyms in Missouri after breaching a restricted space. Subsequent, he despatched an e mail to one of many gymnasium chain’s house owners, claiming he had hacked their community and providing his providers in the identical message, seemingly in search of to safe a cybersecurity consulting contract with the corporate.
“I managed to avoid 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 stated within the e mail. “If I can attain the information on a consumer’s laptop, it signifies potential for deeper system entry.”
He additionally stated in that e mail that he had “assisted over 30 small to medium-sized industrial companies within the Kansas Metropolis, Missouri space.”
In addition to submitting a contracting proposal to the gymnasium proprietor, Kloster eliminated his {photograph} from the gymnasium’s database, lowered his month-to-month gymnasium membership price to solely $1, and stole a workers member’s identify tag.
Weeks later, the defendant posted a screenshot on social media that displayed the gymnasium’s safety digital camera system and indicated that he had gained management over it.
On Might 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 non-public 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 susceptible methods.
If discovered responsible, Kloster is dealing with a potential sentence of as much as 5 years in federal jail with out parole, together with a high quality of as much as $250,000, three years of supervised launch, and an order of restitution.
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