A schoolboy hacked email and got access to personal data of the head of the US National Intelligence

According to US media, the head of US National Intelligence, James Klepper, was the victim of hackers who were able to hack his personal e-mail and get access to personal network accounts.

What happened

A hacker under the nickname Cracka contacted Motherboard journalists - he stated that he was able to get access to a number of accounts owned by Klepper, including his personal email (as well as Klepper's mail), an account in the ISP’s system, and the manager’s home phone special services. As a result, as the hacker stated, he managed to change the settings in such a way that every phone call to Klepper's house was redirected to the office of the Movement for the Liberation of Palestine .
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“I’m sure they didn’t even understand that they were hacked,” said Cracka in an online chat with journalist Lorenzo Fraceschini-Bicchierai. However, a spokesman for the US National Intelligence Service said that the agency and Klepper himself were aware of the hacking and transmitted information to the appropriate authorities. He refused to give any further details. The FBI also declined to comment on the Klepper attack.

The hacker also gave the journalist a phone number, which, according to his assurances, belongs to Klepper. When Franceschini called him, Paul Larudee, co-founder of the movement for the liberation of Palestine, picked up the phone. He said that calls to the Klepper home number would arrive at his office within an hour. According to him, one of the callers said that he was in the house of a senior intelligence officer.

According to public information, the phone number transmitted by the hacker does indeed belong to Klepper's house. Cracka also gave journalists a different number, which, he claims, belongs to the wife of National Intelligence, Susan. When the journalist called this number, the woman picked up the phone and said that she was “not Susan, but she would call back,” but this did not happen.

Also, in confirmation of the hacking fact, Cracka presented a series of screenshots of Kleppers' personal email records as well as their Verizon FiOS account, but the journalists could not confirm their authenticity by themselves.



Also, the hacker sent logs of telephone calls to Klepper's home number to journalists - the list contained the number of Vonna Heaton , the head of Ball Aerospace, who used to be one of the leaders of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency of the United States. Having called this number, the journalist really contacted Vonnaya Heaton, but she refused to answer any questions.

Schoolboy vs. National Intelligence

Cracka Hacker, who attacked the US National Intelligence Head, is a member of a group called Crackas With Attitude (CWA). In October 2015, it was this group that claimed responsibility for hacking the CIA Director John Brennan’s email account . Attackers also managed to gain access to several online tools and portals used by US intelligence agencies. After gaining prominence last year, Cracka and CWA announced that their actions were aimed at supporting the "liberation" of Palestine.

According to Crack's own, he is only 15 years old, and he is studying in one of the American schools, and the CWA consists of six hackers. They are all schoolchildren. Describing the hacking of an email account in the AOL service of John Brennan, Cracka said that “even a five-year-old child could have access to it”.

He heads a large and powerful intelligence service, but he was circled around his finger and cracked by ordinary schoolchildren.

In the commentary of Motherboard, Michael Adams, an information security expert who worked for the American command of special operations for more than 20 years, said that the attack "looks more like a deception through social engineering than a real hack," adding, however, that almost "every serious hacking begins with social engineering. "

In addition, the expert expressed extreme bewilderment that Klepper, taking the post of the head of the US National Intelligence Service, did not make any special efforts to hide information about his phone and home address - this data can be easily detected using popular search engines like Google.

"If I were the director of the National Intelligence of the United States of America, not a living soul would know where I live, and certainly no one would have my home number," Adams said.