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Ex-CIA Employee Charged In Leak Of Classified Hacking Tools
A former CIA employee was charged Monday with leaking information on CIA hacking tools to Wikileaks.
Joshua Adam Schulte, 29, was charged with the theft of classified national defense information in a 13-count indictment handed down by a grand jury, the Justice Department said Monday. According to the indictment, Schulte stole the classified information from a CIA network in 2016 and then transmitted it to an organization that was unidentified in the indictment.
Schulte is also accused of intentionally damaging a CIA computer system, deleting records of his activities and blocking others from accessing the system. Schulte is currently in custody on child pornography charges. He's pleaded not guilty to those charges.
The leaks, which Wikileaks called "Vault 7," revealed tools used by the CIA to hack phones, TVs and computers as part of its investigations. The disclosures showed the lengths to which government investigators go to access electronic evidence, tailoring hacks for specific smart TVs, for example.
[...] "Schulte utterly betrayed this nation and downright violated his victims. As an employee of the CIA, Schulte took an oath to protect this country, but he blatantly endangered it by the transmission of classified Information," William F. Sweeney Jr., head of the New York FBI office, said in a statement Monday.
Man who allegedly gave Vault 7 cache to WikiLeaks busted by poor opsec
Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
FBI used passwords used on suspect's cellphone to also get into his computer.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 20 2018, @08:40PM (1 child)
Turning it around then, this is the kind of person the government hires for sensitive positions after an exhaustive background check? Similarly with the armed FBI agent who ends up shooting somebody in a club after doing a backflip while drinking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 20 2018, @11:14PM
As someone who has had a TS-SCI clearance I can tell you that its an imperfect process. They interview friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc. But if you don't have a criminal record at the time its easy for stuff to slip through. They do check your social media, but its not the same as a criminal investigation that would take warrants to track down things like google search histories. Also the assault charge seems to have been filed after they searched his laptop and found the photos of him raping.