BBC News: Arrests over hacks of CIA and FBI staff

Samuel Miller

In a story published by BBC News, two Americans have been charged for allegedly helping hack high-ranking U.S. government officials. Andrew Otto Boggs, 22, and Justin Gray Liverman, 24, are allegedly members of the ‘Crackas With Attitude’ group, a hacking organization which has been blamed for the attacks.[1]  According to the report, the email accounts of the Director of the CIA, the Chief of National Intelligence, and other high-ranking officials were all hit by ‘Crackas With Attitude’, which also obtained and distributed information of 29,000 FBI and Homeland Security agents and workers.[2]

From October 2015 to February 2016, ‘Crackas With Attitude’ utilized a hacking technique known as social engineering, whereby the attacking entity relies heavily on human interaction to obtain access to data and other sensitive information.[3]  This process, though deceptively rudimentary in concept, often involves deceiving people and organizations into breaking through their normal security procedures.

According to the BBC, “[t]he hackers also posed as technicians from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and other service companies to get passwords re-set so they could take over accounts and get at federal computer systems.”[4]  Mashable further reported, in regards to the hackers, “[t]hey also uploaded personal information from the victims to public sites, made harassing phone calls to the victims and their family members, and defaced victims’ social media accounts.”[5]  In the affidavit released by the United States Department of Justice, the 37-page document details the enterprises of Boggs and Liverman over the course of the hacking spree, which included breaching “victims’ email, Facebook, and internet accounts, as well as the hacking of the Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal (LEEP), a computer system for U.S. law enforcement, intelligence and criminal justice professionals.”[6]  Furthermore, the FBI is continuing to work on investigating and building their case against ‘Crackas With Attitude’ in conjunction with the Crown Prosecution Service in the United Kingdom, where there are three additional individuals suspected of assisting ‘Crackas With Attitude’.[7]

 

[1] BBC News, Arrests over hacks of CIA and FBI staff BBC News (2016). http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37316615 (last visited Sep 11, 2016).

[2] BBC News, supra note 1.

[3] Tim Chester, FBI arrests two members of hacker group Crackas With Attitude Mashable (2016), http://mashable.com/2016/09/08/hackers-arrested-fbi/#brm18lxedzqq (last visited Sep 11, 2016).

[4] BBC News, supra note 1.

[5] Chester, supra note 3.

[6] Chester, supra note 3.

[7] BBC News, supra note 1.