Teen says he hacked CIA director's AOL account

Post by pavornyoh » Mon, Oct 19, 2015, 10:31 PM UTC

gideon_b wrote: post #79

rcurry wrote: post #12

I'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 e…

Post by wavefunction » Mon, Oct 19, 2015, 11:38 PM UTC

blowski wrote: post #53

wavefunction wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US Federal system was designed to have checks and balances provided by oversight by different branches of government. Unfortunately today we have people in these branches of government who either won't do their duty because they are terrible at their jobs or because there is a silent quid-pro-quo where these sorts of people look the other way for each other.

While you're absolutely right in your diagnosis of the problem in the US, I doubt these problems are specific to the US government. I'm a Brit, and there are enough stories of technical incompetence here to make me assume it's a global problem. I suspect even non-democracies have the same issue. Who's going to tell Kim Jong-un he needs to rotate passwords?

Post by baconner » Tue, Oct 20, 2015, 12:05 AM UTC

gideon_b wrote: post #80

baconner wrote: post #13

All 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.

Post by cvwright » Tue, Oct 20, 2015, 1:09 AM UTC

baconner wrote: post #85

gideon_b wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I 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…

Post by JabavuAdams » Tue, Oct 20, 2015, 1:45 AM UTC

llamataboot wrote: post #31

OscarCunningham wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you've hacked the CIA it's probably easier to go public, so that you know the CIA probably won't just kill you.

But don't underestimate the power of teenage male bravado.