Group Hacks FBI Websites, Posts Personal Info on Agents. Trump Can’t Protect You! (#GotBitcoin?)
One of the hackers told TechCrunch the goal of their hack was “experience and money,” and admitted the files could risk the lives of law enforcement. Group Hacks FBI Websites, Posts Personal Info on Agents. Trump Can’t Protect You! (#GotBitcoin?)
A hacker group uploaded the personal information of thousands of federal agents and law enforcement officials onto the web after hacking into “FBI-affiliated websites” and websites connected to at least one company, TechCrunch reports.
The hackers reportedly breached three FBI National Academy Association websites using “public exploits,” downloaded the contents, and uploaded them on their own website. The contents reportedly included “4,000 unique records” of names, email addresses, job titles, phone numbers, and addresses. The group also reportedly hacked into one of manufacturing company Foxconn’s subdomains and acquired thousands of employee records.
“We hacked more than 1,000 sites,” said one of the over 10 hackers in the group who spoke to TechCrunch. “Now we are structuring all the data, and soon they will be sold. I think something else will publish from the list of hacked government sites.”
When asked if they were concerned that the files they uploaded could risk the lives of law enforcement, the hacker responded, “Probably, yes.”
The hacker also claimed to have “over a million data [sic]” collected from the sites, reportedly including employee information of “several U.S. federal agencies and public service organizations.”
According to the hacker, the group’s end game in the large hack was “experience and money.”
The hacker group has posted online the personal information of hundreds of federal agents and police officers apparently stolen from websites affiliated with alumni of the FBI’s National Academy.
The Associated Press counted at least 1,400 unique records of employees of the FBI, Secret Service, Capital Police, and other federal agencies as well as police and sheriffs’ deputies in North Carolina and Florida.
The information appears to come from the websites of three local chapters of the FBI National Academy Associates, which claims 17,000 members nationwide.
The group’s executive director, Howard Cook, said it was looking into whether sites were breached.
The AP is not identifying the hackers’ website. A linked Twitter account says the group is based in Ukraine.
Meanwhile:
Updated: 4-14-2019
Former NSA Contractor Expected To Plead Guilty This Week For Theft Of Top Secret Documents
Harold ‘Hal’ Martin III was scheduled to go to trial in June for allegedly committing the largest heist of classified government information in U.S. history.
A former National Security Agency contractor who was scheduled to go to trial in June on charges of removing a huge amount of classified material from the agency’s headquarters is expected to plead guilty on Thursday, according to court records and a lawyer for the contractor.
Harold “Hal” Martin III, who was indicted in 2017 and accused of taking home thousands of documents containing some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets over a period of years, is scheduled to appear in court at 3 p.m. Thursday, according to a notice posted on the court docket.
U.S. intelligence officials consider the alleged theft of secrets by Mr. Martin—who had worked for both the NSA and the Pentagon on classified cyber weapons and other programs as an employee of Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. and several other defense contractors—to be potentially the largest heist of classified government secrets in American history, measured by the sheer volume of data stolen.
Assessing the direct damage of his actions has been harder to measure amid uncertainty about whether the material he stole ended up—wittingly or otherwise—in the hands of foreign adversaries. What charges Mr. Martin will plead guilty to is unclear, as is whether prosecutors plan to explain if anyone else accessed the documents taken by Mr. Martin.
Mr. Martin’s case reflects the enduring struggle U.S. intelligence agencies have had in preventing the theft of government secrets by employees and contractors since Edward Snowden’s high-profile leak in 2013 of classified files about the NSA’s domestic and international surveillance operations. Despite efforts by both the Obama and Trump administrations to prosecute leaks and invest in technology to detect so-called insider threats, senior counterintelligence officials say the problem hasn’t subsided.
The notice on the court docket shows a “rearraignment” in Mr. Martin’s case, a procedure used when a defendant is changing a plea, and a lawyer for Mr. Martin confirmed he will be pleading guilty.
Mr. Martin’s trial was scheduled to begin in June; he pleaded not guilty in February 2017 to 20 counts of willfully retaining classified information. A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Baltimore, which is prosecuting the case, declined to comment.
Mr. Martin spent up to 20 years stealing sensitive information related to national defense from the government, building up an enormous cache of digital files—some 50 terabytes of information—that he hoarded around his Maryland home and in his car, according to prosecutors. He has been in custody since he was secretly arrested in August 2016.
Prosecutors said he began taking home secret documents in 1996, including intelligence related to “foreign cyber intrusion techniques.” A 2017 indictment against Mr. Martin contained a list of 20 documents he allegedly had stolen, such as a file detailing specific daily operations carried out by the NSA and another from the CIA that discussed sources and methods related to a specific foreign intelligence target.
The indictment also described his removal of an NSA antiterrorism document “concerning extremely sensitive U.S. planning and operations regarding global terrorists;” a user’s guide for an NSA intelligence-gathering tool, and two August 2016 documents “discussing capabilities and gaps in capabilities of the U.S. military and details of specific operations.”
Mr. Martin, like Mr. Snowden before him, was employed at the intelligence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton when he was arrested by authorities in 2016, though he is alleged to have stolen information without being caught while employed at several different contractors. Booz Allen commissioned an external review of its security practices after Mr. Martin was arrested. That review, which was being led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller before he was tapped as special counsel to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election, hasn’t been made public.
“We have closely cooperated with the federal government throughout the case,” a Booz Allen spokesman said.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mr. Mueller as special counsel, also signed the February 2017 indictment against Mr. Martin while serving as the U.S. attorney in Maryland at the time.
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