Teen 'white boy' explains how he hacked the CIA boss' personal emails
- 9 years ago
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA — The CIA's top official, Director John Brennan, had his personal email account owned this month by a small group of hackers according to a report in the the New York Post.
The lead hacker, who remains anonymous, recently contacted the paper to brag about how he "socially engineered" his way into Brennan's AOL account.
The Post's source claims to be a white-American teen, and made a point of saying he was not Muslim. He claims he's been sneakily calling Brennan since August. When he and two peers got the CIA Director's cell number, a simple reverse lookup revealed he was a
Verizon customer.
Posing as a Verizon technician, the hacker called Verizon with a made-up employee "Vcode," and was able to obtain Brennan's account number, four-digit pin code, AOL email address and the last four digits of his bank account number.
Then posing as Brennan with the private information he drew from Verizon, he called AOL and got the email password reset with relative ease.
On October 12th, the hacker logged into Brennan's personal AOL account, and accessed dozens of emails, many of which contained top-secret documents Brennan had forwarded from his work account.
When Brennan discovered he'd been owned, he tried to reset the password. But on three following occasions, the hackers were able to get back into his account, foiling his attempts at regaining his security.
The lead hacker then called Brennan's cell to taunt him. He says Brennan tried to buy their silence with cash. The young hacker's response was that he was not interested in monetary compensation, and that all he wanted was a free Palestine and for the US to stop killing innocent people.
Given this recent high-level hack, as well as all the trouble that former Secretary of State and Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has endured over the past six months for using her personal email for work, top U.S. government officials would surely be more careful with their cyber security going forward. Surely.
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The lead hacker, who remains anonymous, recently contacted the paper to brag about how he "socially engineered" his way into Brennan's AOL account.
The Post's source claims to be a white-American teen, and made a point of saying he was not Muslim. He claims he's been sneakily calling Brennan since August. When he and two peers got the CIA Director's cell number, a simple reverse lookup revealed he was a
Verizon customer.
Posing as a Verizon technician, the hacker called Verizon with a made-up employee "Vcode," and was able to obtain Brennan's account number, four-digit pin code, AOL email address and the last four digits of his bank account number.
Then posing as Brennan with the private information he drew from Verizon, he called AOL and got the email password reset with relative ease.
On October 12th, the hacker logged into Brennan's personal AOL account, and accessed dozens of emails, many of which contained top-secret documents Brennan had forwarded from his work account.
When Brennan discovered he'd been owned, he tried to reset the password. But on three following occasions, the hackers were able to get back into his account, foiling his attempts at regaining his security.
The lead hacker then called Brennan's cell to taunt him. He says Brennan tried to buy their silence with cash. The young hacker's response was that he was not interested in monetary compensation, and that all he wanted was a free Palestine and for the US to stop killing innocent people.
Given this recent high-level hack, as well as all the trouble that former Secretary of State and Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has endured over the past six months for using her personal email for work, top U.S. government officials would surely be more careful with their cyber security going forward. Surely.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to TomoNews, where we animate the most entertaining news on the internets. Come here for an animated look at viral headlines, US news, celebrity gossip, salacious scandals, dumb criminals and much more! Subscribe now for daily news animations that will knock your socks off.
Visit our official website for all the latest, uncensored videos: http://us.tomonews.net
Check out our Android app: http://bit.ly/1rddhCj
Check out our iOS app: http://bit.ly/1gO3z1f
Get top stories delivered to your inbox everyday: http://bit.ly/tomo-newsletter
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Instagram @tomonewsus http://instagram.com/tomonewsus