Cybersecurity

Teenagers who hacked CIA chief hit White House official

Federal Employees
Getty Images

The teenaged hackers who broke into CIA Director John Brennan’s personal email account have now hit a White House official, Motherboard reports.

{mosads}The group, which calls itself Crackas with Attitude, broke into the home phone and email accounts of President Obama’s senior advisor on science and technology, John Holdren.

They then set all of his calls to forward to the Free Palestine Movement, as they did in a hack of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s personal accounts last week.

The hackers gained access to Holdren’s account through a simple phishing scheme, according to Motherboard.

“[The hacker] sent [Holdren’s wife] Cheryl an email claiming to be John LOL,” group spokesman Cracka told Motherboard in an online chat. The email read “something like ‘Hey honey, do you have the password for our joint Xfinity account? I lost it,’” according to Cracka.

Cheryl Holdren allegedly sent the password to the hacker, allowing him to gain access to the account.

The group has expressed support for Palestine before, portraying themselves in an interview with The New York Post as being motivated by opposition to U.S. foreign policy and support for Palestine.

In a series of tweets in November, Cracka posted graphic images of violence apparently taken in Israel.

“do you understand what i was fighting for now?” he tweeted.

“for other countries, you all knew i risked my life for palestine, for freedom for others, for rights for other people,” he tweeted.

Up until then, the teenaged hackers had been widely characterized as stoner high school students who were essentially trolling senior law enforcement and intelligence officials.

Last year, the group broke into the personal AOL account of the CIA head, leaking personally sensitive files such as his application for security clearance. The documents were posted on WikiLeaks, and contained personal information about Brennan and his family.

Last week, Cracka claimed to have broken into a personal email and phone account of Clapper and his wife. A spokesman for Clapper said that the spy office is “aware of the incident and have reported it to the appropriate authorities.”

In addition to Brennan, Clapper and Holdren, the group has also allegedly hacked Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and FBI Deputy Director Mark Giuliano. In November, they released what appeared to be thousands of law enforcement and military personnel’s personal information.

“John and Jeh are both very big people and high-ranking people, so, I mean, if we hacked them, they would be ashamed,” Cracka told CNN. “But it was really because the government are killing innocent people, they also fund (Israel) for killing innocent people.”

Tags

Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

See all Hill.TV See all Video

Most Popular

Load more

Video

See all Video