The hacker group, Crackas With Attitude (CWA), who penetrated the private email account of CIA Director John Brennan is also being credited with hacking into a law enforcement information-sharing site run by the FBI. The teenage hackers reportedly posted personal data from the FBI and other officials. The information was evidently retrieved from the Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal, a website that allows state and local officials to communicate with federal agencies regarding investigations. The FBI has not made an arrest in the case.
Last Thursday, it was reported that the teenage hackers released a list of approximately 2,400 names, phone numbers and emails apparently belonging to federal and local law enforcement, and intelligence and military agencies.
But, this latest hack appears to be much more extensive than originally thought. Motherboard reports that:
“…the data dump, as well as the hack that allowed them to obtain the data, might be far worse than initially thought. The list contains not only names of local police officers, but also names of FBI, Secret Service, CIA and other intelligence agents.
Some of these might even inadvertently have had their cover exposed, according to Michael Adams, an information security expert who served more than two decades in the U.S. Special Operations Command, who reviewed the data for Motherboard.”
Moreover, also listed are what appears to be agents who are deployed abroad. This listing released by CWA would allow foreign governments to map out where agents work, and with whom, and that makes it a far more serious crime and dangerous for the exposed agents.
“‘They’re busting covers left and right and they don’t know it,’ Adams told Motherboard.”
“There are even four people listed as working for the United Kingdom Home Office, who all have leo.gov emails. Leo.gov is part of the Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal (or LEEP), a portal maintained by the FBI where ‘law enforcement agencies, intelligence groups, and criminal justice entities’ can access ‘beneficial resources.’ According to its membership criteria, agents from foreign law enforcement and intelligence agencies can be part of it, provided the FBI vets them.”
According to a CWA member, who goes by the name “Cubed,” they’ve got “a lot more names.” When pressed for more details, Cubed said there are “too many to count.” He gave no indication as to whether these other names would also be released or any timeframe.
Another member, who goes by the name Cracka, told Motherboard that the group had “accessed several federal law enforcement tools, including JABS, a database of arrested people, IC3, an FBI crime-reporting tool, and VCC, a sharing tool for law enforcement agencies. Cracka also gave Wired a detailed list of other law enforcement tools they allegedly got access to through a portal he declined to name.”
Cracka, whose Twitter account claims affiliation with hacktivist group Anonymous, has commented that he does not want to be arrested. And, he has published a manifesto in which he explains that he is not doing this “for fame.” He is hacking into U.S. government computer systems as an act of revenge against the U.S. government for funding Israel.
