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Teen says he hacked CIA director's AOL account
71–80 of 93 posts
Re: Teen says he hacked CIA director's AOL account
#72I'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: "[…
>I'm not just saying this to be a jerk - this should be grounds for immediate termination of his employment.
More specifically, his security clearance should be revoked, or modified such that he's not allowed to use a computer without being supervised by a competent person; which ought to have the effect that he's basically disqualified from working for the CIA, or speaking about anything related to information security.
Re: Teen says he hacked CIA director's AOL account
#73A 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?
The 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 presume…
>I don't think a technical/engineering background is presumed or necessary for such a role.
Definitely, but one should know his/her limitations, and that one in particular should also never speak about infosec. Brennan fails on both of those accounts.
Re: Teen says he hacked CIA director's AOL account
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I 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" ... Su…
Yeah, 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-."
I wasn't the guy... I just happened to be around when it happened... Like I said, I did get a call from someone trying to get hardware support when the power was out... I also had a friend that used to keep his ash tray in front of the desktop as a "smokeless ashtray" since it sucked the smoke into the front intake.
These are probably the three most stupid tech things I've seen... I also saw a computer that was shot once, I am pretty sure that's happened a few times.
Re: Teen says he hacked CIA director's AOL account
#75This apparently linked twitter account 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 Whi…
@_CWA_ is suspended as of a few minutes 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?
Re: Teen says he hacked CIA director's AOL account
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
@_CWA_ is suspended as of a few minutes 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?
@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.
Re: Teen says he hacked CIA director's AOL account
#77his twitter account is nuts
Re: Teen says he hacked CIA director's AOL account
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
>_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?
@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.
Aaah, got it. Thanks.
Re: Teen says he hacked CIA director's AOL account
#79I'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 only sensitive information listed in this article is his application for security clearance. While that may contain a lot of personal information, that file would have been compiled and sent before he had access to classified documents, and before he had a government email address.
I am guessing this kid wiggled his way into a 10+ year old AOL account containing data that was never deleted. We all probably have emails and contacts sitting in a forgotten AOL account.
Re: Teen says he hacked CIA director's AOL account
#80All 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.
There 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.