An Illinois man has pleaded guilty to targeting nearly 600 Snapchat accounts through phishing messages as part of an effort to steal nude and semi-nude images from female student athletes.
Kyle Svara, 27, entered a guilty plea this week after US investigators charged him with hacking-related crimes back in December. His scheme operated from at least May 2020 to February 2021 and involved breaking into affected Snapchat accounts to download personal images. To do so, Svara impersonated a Snapchat customer support representative and tricked the victims into sending their login codes to access their accounts.
According to a court document, Svara first resorted to “social engineering and other resources to obtain victim emails, phone numbers and/or Snapchat usernames.” He then created an account on TextNow, a service that lets you send text messages under a different number.
“Posing as the ‘Snapchat Support Team,’ Svara used his TextNow account to send more than 4,500 outgoing messages to would-be victims,” the charging document says. The messages tricked 571 victims into sending back their login codes, enabling him to break into the Snapchat accounts of at least 59 women.
In his phishing messages, Svara also “solicited four-digit ‘My Eyes Only’ passcodes, which allowed him to access a section of the victim’s Snapchat account that had additional security and required a second passcode,” the court document adds.
The case highlights why it’s important to be careful around text messages claiming to come from a popular app or internet service. Texts pretending to be account security messages are often fake, designed to trick you into handing over your password or two-factor authentication code.
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Investigators uncovered Svara’s involvement with the court document, noting he registered the TextNow account in his own name. Steve Waithe, a former track and field coach at Northeastern University, also allegedly hired Svara to steal the nude images, paying him $50. Waithe was sentenced to five years in prison in 2024 for stealing personal photos from “over 100 women across the country through the use of nearly two dozen sham social media and email accounts.”
As for Svara, he advertised his ability to infiltrate Snapchat accounts on online forums, including Reddit. In addition, he sold or traded the stolen images with others on the internet. His sentencing hearing is slated for May 18, and he faces up to 32 years in prison.
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I’ve been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I’m currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country’s technology sector.
Since 2020, I’ve covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I’ve combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink’s cellular service.
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