CIA director's personal email may have been breached – by a teenager

The hacker, a self-alleged American high school student, says he was able to access John Brennan's personal documents and voicemails.

|
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP/File
CIA Director John Brennan listens during a news conference at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., Dec. 11, 2014. An anonymous hacker claims to have breached CIA Director John Brennan’s personal email account and has posted documents online, including a list of email addresses purportedly from Brennan’s contact file.

CIA Director John Brennan’s personal email may have been hacked by an American high school student.

The Secret Service and FBI are currently looking into the alleged incident, which came to light late Sunday night when the New York Post reported that a “stoner” student claimed he was able to access Mr. Brennan’s AOL email account and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson’s Comcast account.

The CIA has not verified the extent the hack but does not think any classified information had been made vulnerable, according to CNN.

"We are aware of the media report, however as a matter of policy, we do not comment on the secretary's personal security," a DHS spokesman told Reuters.

The hacker posted documents from his purported hack on his Twitter account, @phphax, including a list of email addresses from what he says is Brennan’s contact list. Among other posted files he claims to have stolen are a log of phone calls by former deputy director Avril Haines and a spreadsheet of names, some are of senior intelligence officials, with corresponding social security numbers, which the hacker redacted.

The hacker says he also listened to Brennan’s voicemails and got ahold of his 47-page application for top-secret security clearance, known as an SF86. Millions of the same type of documents were stolen by Chinese hackers last year from the federal personnel office and they contain sensitive information such as foreign contacts and finances.

The application could not be found on the hacker’s Twitter account.

The hacker told the Post via telephone that he was motivated by his opposition to US foreign policy. He said he isn’t Muslim and supports Palestine. He did not reveal his name or where he’s from.

Allegedly, he used a method called “social engineering,” in which he got Brennan’s personal information from Verizon and then misled AOL into allowing him to reset Brennan’s password.

This report contains material from Reuters and the Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to CIA director's personal email may have been breached – by a teenager
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2015/1019/CIA-director-s-personal-email-may-have-been-breached-by-a-teenager
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe