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Teen says he hacked CIA director's AOL account
- swagswag 11y agoteen stoner and ladies man gotta make it sound edgier
- ChuckMcM 11y agoI can believe that the information security is atrocious for folks unwilling or unable to adopt agency policies, but how stupid do you have to be to poke the head of the CIA in public?
- pavornyoh 11y agoAgreed. Also this in the post>The hacker contacted The Post last week to brag about his exploits, which include posting some of the stolen documents and a portion of Brennan’s contact list on Twitter. Like seriously, it is like begging to be apprehended.
- OscarCunningham 11y agoOnce you've hacked the CIA it's probably easier to go public, so that you know the CIA probably won't just kill you.
- llamataboot 11y agoBut don't underestimate the power of teenage male bravado.
- pavornyoh 11y ago>But don't underestimate the power of teenage male bravado. I guess you are right. I clicked the twitter name on the post and he has indeed posted the documents and is daring them. Just unreal.
- JabavuAdams 11y agoI prefer Buffy's line: "acute testosterone poisoning."
- cvwright 11y agoHacked the CIA, you say? http://xkcd.com/932/ http://xkcd.com/932/
- drig 11y agoWhy do they keep referring to this guy as a "stoner"? What he smokes doesn't seem to be at all related to what he's done.
- tvon 11y agoThis is the NY Post. Also, what is a NY Post story doing here?
- pavornyoh 11y ago>Also, what is a NY Post story doing here? NY Post was the first to break the news and it is all over the news- CNN, Fox, etc.. Can't find the link to them but here it is herehttp://www.computerworld.com/article/2994451/cybercrime-hacking/stoner-high-school-kid-claims-to-have-hacked-cia-directors-email-account.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/2994451/cybercrime-hack...
- rm_-rf_slash 11y agoThis is the New York Post we're dealing with. To play their own game, one can refer to the fear-mongering, Murdoch-owned paper as a "rag."
- eric_h 11y agoBecause it's the New York Post; it makes for a good click-baity headline.
- pavornyoh 11y agoI am assuming based on this -He explained “CWA” stood for “Crackas With Attitude,” which he said referred to him and a classmate with whom he smokes pot.- The NY Post went for a dramatic title. But I could be wrong. The NY Post is known for such "wild titles" for attention.
- oldmanjay 11y agoI've sort of taken it as the NYP's attempt to shame the head of the CIA even further.
- 11y ago
- dekhn 11y agoNot the first time a CIA director has been casually incompetent with confidential files: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Deutch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Deutch
- rcurry 11y agoI'm less concerned about the hacker, and more concerned that the Director of the CIA not only has an aol.com email account but also uses that account to transmit sensitive information. I'm not just saying this to be a jerk - this should be grounds for immediate termination of his employment. This is clearly a guy who shows poor judgement with respect to the management of sensitive material. Also, from the article: "[The] problem with these older-generation guys is that they don’t know anything about cybersecurity, and as you can see, it can be problematic.” On the contrary - these "older-generation guys" cut their teeth in an environment where we were going head-to-head with the KGB on a daily basis. These guys have a solid understanding and awareness of basic information security procedures, as well as a strong understanding of adversary capabilities. I don't buy it.
- xlm1717 11y agoIt's plain negligence. Unfortunately, in this political climate it's not favorable to punish a high-ranking government official over mishandling their emails, even if said email is used to transmit sensitive information.
- untog 11y agoWhy, whatever could you be referring to
- hartator 11y agoI suppose he's referring to the Clinton's case.
- scott_karana 11y agoHe was being sarcastic, pretty sure. ;)
- fweespeech 11y agoSome part of me hopes it was part of a disinformation campaign in the form of expected-levels-of-incompetence-leads-to-"hacked"-account. However, the fact its expected levels of incompetence :/
- baconner 11y agoAll this time I had assumed when Brennan called for dangerous things like encryption back doors he must understand the negative impacts would be but just didn't care as long as it helped the CIA. Now I'm thinking he actually doesn't know what he's talking about at all which is somehow even worse. An AOL email account with confidential files in it? Unbelievable.
- gideon_b 11y agoThere was nothing in the story saying confidential files were stored in his AOL account. Also nothing about when the account was last used. There was a time when we all had noisy modems and AOL accounts.
- baconner 11y agoI think these qualify. You are free to disagree. CIA Director John Brennan’s private account held sensitive files — including his 47-page application for top-secret security clearance — until he recently learned that it had been infiltrated, the hacker told The Post. Other emails stored in Brennan’s non-government account contained the Social Security numbers and personal information of more than a dozen top American intelligence officials
- cvwright 11y agoNot quite. Confidential is a technical term in the military/IC world. It's a classification, just like secret or top secret. I read somewhere that a lot of the Wikileaks cables were supposedly stuff marked confidential. Storing confidential material in an AOL account would be a crime, just like giving the same material to Wikileaks. Brennan's PII, job history, etc. is certainly valuable information, but clearance application paperwork itself is unclassified.
- baconner 11y agoOk then my mistake - there's nothing in the article that says they were files classified as confidential.
- snockerton 11y agoI wonder if the AOL disk is still sitting in his CDROM tray at home.
- Cheyana 11y agoWorse. It's a floppy disk.
- rcurry 11y agoWhy would he keep his AOL disk in the cup holder?
- tracker1 11y agoI knew (witnessed) the person who got that famed call... was at the compaq side of the MCI call center handling support calls for compaq, on one side, and iomega on the other (I worked on the iomega side). Walking by... head pops up... "dude... dude... (trying no to snicker too hard) ... this lady's cup holder is broken..." ... me respondign "cup holder?" ... "yeah, the cd drive.. she thinks it's a cup holder" ... Such a brief interaction, but really funny none the less... My funniest call was someone calling to back up their master's thesis work, because they were concerned about the power during the storm... was almost 6 minutes into the call when he said the power was out (desktop computer). It's really hard to be professional when faced with certain levels of stupid.
- rcurry 11y agoThat's awesome. I was just kidding around, but I think some people don't get the reference to that support call being the stuff of legends.
- FireBeyond 11y agoYeah, in cases like this I refer to Scott Adams Dilbert (or rather one of the books). "I get emails all the time from people who say they were -that- tech support guy that got -that- call about the cup holder. While we're on the subject of what people want in their email client, I want my email client to lock all those people in a room and force them to duke it out until there really is only -that one guy-."
- Cheyana 11y agoIf this was anyone below him he would discipline and possibly terminate them.
- pavornyoh 11y agoA bit of a naive question but can someone answer this for me? To be a CIA Director, isn't it a requirement to have some sort of a technical background that way whoever is in the role is able to anticipate and always be a step head when it comes to these sort of problems?
- Cheyana 11y agoI guess they don't look at themselves very closely. Otherwise, the biggest red flag should have been the fact that the CIA director has AN AOL ACCOUNT.
- pavornyoh 11y agoThank you all for answering my question.
- oldmanjay 11y agoPerhaps in some government that is run well, but the US government optimizes for political rewards over suitability for service at this level.
- xlm1717 11y agoIt seems you just have to put in a long career and know all the right people. It also seems that it's the NSA doing all the high-tech work now anyway.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- avivo 11y agoThe CIA "is tasked with gathering, processing and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT)" The director is presumably in charge of executing specific missions and a long term vision for human spying. She/he does this by directing people who manage people who manage people (etc.). I don't think a technical/engineering background is presumed or necessary for such a role. That said, an understanding of the basic structures and failure modes of information security in the digital world as it pertains to HUMINT does seem highly relevant (and necessary) for crafting and executing a modern vision/mission.
- benevol 11y agoThis is so dumb, it couldn't even be taken seriously as a honeypot strategy.
- oldmanjay 11y agoThis kid is going to get charged with felony embarrassment of a federal official and it will probably hurt quite a bit.
- awqrre 11y agoBut according to the government, you don't have expectation of privacy for any personal data stored in the "cloud"
- gknoy 11y agoThat may be true, but it doesn't help. Impersonating another person could plausibly be construed as accessing a system without permission -- a federal offense, I believe. Couple that with things that likely include classified information, if the director included that kind of thing, and anyone who accesses his account could be facing a very aggressive prosecution.
- awqrre 11y agoYou can't have it both ways if you are the government... it should be the same for everyone.
- tajen 11y ago"Show me your cool clock"? What could be a nice political message? Ahmed and this teen applying as CIA directors?
- discardorama 11y agoSo they claim he had classified docs in his AOL account. Why didn't the person(s) emailing these docs to Brennan's AOL account raise a question?
- mgkimsal 11y agoperhaps he just emailed those docs to himself? I do that a fair amount, so I can pick them up later.
- tracker1 11y agoI'm working in a relatively locked down environment.. At least once a week I have to email myself something (nothing sensitive) just to be able to get to it at home, which requires a resource that's blocked en-masse at work, but none the less I need access to.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- lifeformed 11y agoHe probably just sent them to himself so he can read the stuff at home or away from his work computers.
- bitwize 11y agoWhere are your brains, in your ass? It's stupid, man, it's universally stupid.
- danso 11y ago> CIA Director John Brennan’s private account held sensitive files — including his 47-page application for top-secret security clearance Stories like these make me shudder thinking about the times I may have, at some point, included a document with personal information in an email, such as to a prospective landlord for verification. Even if I were able to keep my email account reasonably secure...I'm pretty sure all the recipients of my email aren't as wary, or regularly delete old received emails with attachments that they've collected over the _decade_. Although in Mr. Brennan's case, he doesn't have that same excuse. It may have been reasonably safe (for a layperson in IT) to send his application file over aol.com's servers, but not to keep a copy of it in his Sent box. Even a novice at cybersecurity should realize the problem of keeping digital files around on an online server...it's not much different than keeping files in a file cabinet and expecting that file cabinet never to be compromised.
- x1798DE 11y ago>Stories like these make me shudder thinking about the times I may have, at some point, included a document with personal information in an email, such as to a prospective landlord for verification. I always insist on encryption for these sorts of things. I'm fairly certain that for everyone I've asked about an encrypted channel to deliver data, I've always been the first person to even ask. This includes hospitals, agencies who do background checks, etc. It's incredibly disturbing that no one else is insisting that their sensitive documents not just sit unencrypted in all these random in and out boxes.
- ck2 11y agoThat point in life when you realize that the people "in charge" have no idea what they are doing and might be the furthest thing from an expert.
- fdang 11y agoI shudder at just how much information chinese and russian hackers were able to get or still in process of acquiring or planted early ahead of time so it can be activated for future use. Hope the US also has enough dirt to counter the balance.
- jessaustin 11y agoThe reason those in charge don't care about secrecy is... secrecy is important not for reasons of "national security", but rather for those of politics. Do we need to bash some hackers or protesters or journalists? "OK, then secrecy is literally the most important thing, more important than cute little kids or the Constitution or even the NFL." On the other hand, when it's just us old M-IC lizards futzing around? "Naw, who cares? I'm the expert!"
- gotchange 11y agoI am not buying the Palestinian/Intifada cause of this stunt. There's something fishy about this operation and the timing in particular for the leak.
- imgabe 11y agoAnd the previous CIA director got fired because he had an affair that was leaked via his email account. What is it with CIA directors and email accounts?
- atourgates 11y agoThis apparently linked twitter account https://twitter.com/_CWA_ https://twitter.com/_CWA_ has posted what appears to be un-redacted screenshots of names, phone numbers and social security numbers of what I would assume the NYP article is referring to as "top American intelligence officials". A quick crosscheck of the names and emails brings up: * The current Senior Director for the North Africa and Yemen National Security Council for the White House * The former Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, for the US Department of Defense * A retired 3-star general and former Deputy National Security Advisor to the President It says something sad about our cybersecurity preparedness that the director of the CIA is keeping this info in an aol.com account.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago@_CWA_ is suspended as of a few minutes ago.
- pavornyoh 11y ago>_CWA_ is suspended as of a few minutes ago. What about the twitter account in the article? I am assuming that is what you meant?
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago@phphax is still up. @_CWA_ was an account that was linked to by @phphax in a stickied post. The @_CWA_ account posted the SSN's of Brennan and about a dozen other gov't officials and mucky mucks. It appears that @_CWA_ was a sacrificial account used for the purpose of disseminating that info.
- pavornyoh 11y agoAaah, got it. Thanks.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- NN88 11y agohis twitter account is nuts
- NN88 11y agoHe's taunting them right now
- nomadhacker 11y agoSorry, I can't get past the fact the CIA director has an AOL account.