[HN Gopher] Former NSA Employee Arrested on Espionage-Related Ch... ___________________________________________________________________ Former NSA Employee Arrested on Espionage-Related Charges Author : jc_811 Score : 73 points Date : 2022-09-29 21:11 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.justice.gov) (TXT) w3m dump (www.justice.gov) | starik36 wrote: | Does FBI catch actual criminals anymore? It seems that every | success of theirs consists of finding a weak minded individual, | talking him into doing something illegal, maybe even supplying | him with weapons or some other incriminating evidence, then | arresting him a couple of weeks later. | | Do they have some sort of quota of how many terrorist they need | to catch a year in order to get a bonus? | wil421 wrote: | Has there ever been a case where two undercover agents are trying | to play the other one? Not knowing each other are agents. | | Or a situation where the guy who an undercover agent approaches | tells his superiors? Who then want him to go undercover to find | out who the suspected foreign agent works for. | | I'm sure this can happen in government. | sgjohnson wrote: | > Has there ever been a case where two undercover agents are | trying to play the other one? Not knowing each other are | agents. | | It has happened several times with cops. | | Feds are a bit more professional I believe. | mhh__ wrote: | Probably no upper bound on IQ for FBI agents | wil421 wrote: | Yea I was specifically thinking the feds due to them being a | large bureaucracy. No doubt the local cops have done it. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | There was an Air Force counterintelligence agent who was caught | spying for Iran. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monica_Witt | frogblast wrote: | I recall a news story from a few years ago (can't find it | now)... | | There was once a bank that looked the other way when lots of | shady cash came in, allowed transfers of those amounts to to | foreign banks, basically ignored KYC rules, etc. Word got | around, and lots of criminals all over started using this bank | for all of their money laundering purposes. | | Some banking authority started noticing a lot of suspicious | transactions, and was preparing to shut the whole thing down, | disconnect the bank from all transfers, raid offices, arrest | employees, trumpet press releases about how they're protecting | the American financial system, etc... (ie, exactly what they | are supposed to do). | | The bank was, of course, a honeypot run by some other 3-letter | agency, who was actively facilitating money laundering in order | to collect enormous amounts of info about who was involved. | | (basically the banking version of that 'encrypted phone' | scheme). | | The raids were mere hours away when someone put two and two | together, and managed to get it called off. | dkokelley wrote: | I want to see a movie where a major criminal organization is | completely overrun by undercover agents of various | governments/agencies, but none of them know it so they keep the | organization running for fear of being found out. The true | criminals have long since retired. | gumby wrote: | It's a bit of a spoiler but you may like the film "The | Accountant" starring Ben Affleck. | | Also the Book "A Scanner Darkly" by Philip K Dick which (no | spoiler) explores the consequences of deep undercover. | echelon_musk wrote: | While we're here, why not also the excellent Deep Cover [0] | with Larry Fishburne and Jeff Goldblum. | | [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104073/ | d0mine wrote: | There is a real example when a government spy actually led a | terrorist organization: "Azef, a double-agent in the employ | of the Tsarist secret police Okhrana, changed the Terrorist | Brigade's mode of attack from firearms to dynamite" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR_Combat_Organization | jerrysievert wrote: | not a movie but there's a classic get smart episode where all | of the kaos agents captured turn out to be government agents. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | See "The Man Who Was Thursday" by G. K. Chesterton. | yieldcrv wrote: | This happened on the Silk Road case. | | Part of the reason they never tried Ross Ulbricht for the hit | jobs is because a rogue FBI office in Baltimore was staging the | hits in a studio (the evidence to show Ross, to get the rest of | the payment), and the FBI office in Chicago also investigating | Silk Road was like "why are you guys roleplaying, this can't be | as cringy as it looks, what is going on in Maryland", and the | Secret Service and DEA agents were roleplaying as moderators on | Silk Road and creating fake controversy to both Ross Ulbricht | and the FBI offices investigating, just so the Secret Service | and DEA could extort Ross (for the fake hits) and ride off into | the sunset with the money, landing a movie deal with Fox. | They're in jail now. And the hitman stuff was dropped under | equally fake pretexts just to save face. | | The Secret Service and DEA agent were being tried at the same | time as Ross Ulbricht was, this information and evidence was | kept from Ross and his trial and only came to light afterwards. | Wasn't accepted in the appeal. Sentencing didn't factor any of | this in either. Embarrassing case. | | https://www.vice.com/en/article/8q845p/dea-agent-who-faked-a... | anigbrowl wrote: | I find it hilarious that he got hired to a security oversight | position, started trying to sell his employers' property off the | back of a truck, and became the target of a FBI sting operation | all in the space of 3 weeks. How naive do you have to be to think | that you're not being closely scrutinized, both because it's the | freaking NSA and because you're within the normal probation | period for a new job? | | Perhaps a worse punishment than the inevitable long prison term | is the fact that this guys entire trip through the alimentary | canal of our criminal justice system is going to have a | continuous laugh track. | ikiris wrote: | The part that amazes me is someone this _stupid_ made it | through the hiring process. | aliqot wrote: | Underachieving stoners with IT degrees just laughing all the | way to the bank... and then the dispensary. | koolba wrote: | They used to drug test but I think that was too restrictive | to their inbound funnel. | BobbyJo wrote: | NSA probably wishes they could hire stoners. | [deleted] | adolph wrote: | Clearly should have been hired as a pen tester, not security | oversight | superkuh wrote: | Now we wait for the FBI to get involved, take custody of the | evidence, and for one of them to start stealing They do it far | more often, or at least get caught more often, than the NSA. | | FBI/NSA/etc are just government backed criminals. | MarchKilroy89 wrote: | This affidavit is a laugh riot so far. Guy has a background in | infosec, an holds a CISSP cert, among others. The FBI sends him | crypto and what does he do?! | | (1) immediately opens a KYC custodial account (2) xfers the | crypto there (3) converts it to USD and sends it to his KYC bank | in Colorado. | | You can't make this stuff up. Also I love how (ostensibly either | proton or tutanota) is referred to "Foreign Email Provider". They | should buy ForeignEmailProvider.com and make it another email | domain for their users. I would love | hackerman69420@foreignemailprovider.com | vdfs wrote: | 4 minutes later, someone registered that domain | wswope wrote: | Don't mind me; just checking for any automated scripts that | are watching for unregistered domains mentioned on here: | | SmallPPDomainRegisterBot.com | runnerup wrote: | how would you differentiate a script from a troll? | MarchKilroy89 wrote: | Wasn't me! But I expect my hackerman handle when you get your | infra set up, anonymous registrant! :p | arthurcolle wrote: | They should just redirect ForeignEmailDomain to whatever | the real foreign email domain was lmao. What is it, | Tutanota? ProtonMail? FastMail? Lmao | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | You should grab Hackerman31337 first. That will be worth | something. | mzs wrote: | And he worked at NSA for under a month. | rsj_hn wrote: | Brilliant! Also try "ShadyForeignEmailProvider.com" | jrockway wrote: | One of my deep background worries is how many criminals aren't | caught because they don't make amateur mistakes. You always | read these indictments and the perpetrator served themselves up | on a silver platter. But what about all of those unsolved | crimes that might simply be unsolvable! | bombcar wrote: | Some of them go for awhile, but the criminal has to not slip | up every single time. | | But if you are going to do a crime do it once and done and | you may very well get away with it. | philip1209 wrote: | Interesting to think that, with a little information, you could | pull up the cryptocurrency transaction (assuming it's not a | secret ledger like zcash) and trace how the FBI funded the | wallet. | AustinDizzy wrote: | I tried that exercise after reading the affidavit, and | determined they were using Monero (XMR) which makes this task | much more difficult if not impossible. | thakoppno wrote: | I too read the affidavit looking for opsec tips to commit my | own mastermind crime. | solveit wrote: | Good to see they know what they're doing. | bri3d wrote: | The affidavit indicates that the target selected the | cryptocurrency - presumably, he thought he knew what he was | doing, but the amounts and times were still cross- | correlated after the fact. | harry8 wrote: | What this tells us is exactly how competent the NSA are. Every | single hostile foreign power has their secrets if this guy has | them. | Someone1234 wrote: | The guy only worked there for three months, and there was an FBI | sting operation against him. Is this something they routinely do | to new employees, or maybe they found out something right after | his hiring? It isn't strange that an employee was doing something | wrong, they got wind, and set up a sting, but the timetable is | crazy short. | googlryas wrote: | It sounds like the FBI has an website/email account set up like | "I_AM_A_RUSSIAN_SPY@gmail.com". | | People email that account with offers of providing information | to the russian government, and then the FBI goes and sees who | had access to the documents which get sent over. In this case, | only one person accessed all the documents, so even if he | doesn't identify himself to I_AM_A_RUSSIAN_SPY@gmail.com, they | still get him. | | It doesn't seem like this person was specifically targeted or | had an operation against him. He just fell into the honey pot. | thret wrote: | It's strange that they would give a security clearance to | someone in a bad financial situation. I would think it's quite | rare for the FBI to run a sting against an NSA employee... | perhaps he wasn't targeted at all, but went out looking for | someone to sell information to. | aliqot wrote: | Agencies are well known to not pay competitively, even in IT | roles, but when I think about the obvious solution which is | to pay more, I immediately think of the uproar and | accusations that would come with a government official | getting what some might consider a 'lavish' wage even if it | is industry standard for the skillset. | | I'm looking at this to be possible more like when you have | company wide phishing tests going through the emails, and it | catches Brenda the new person in accounting who's still on | their probationary period. | mhoad wrote: | Let me put it to you another way. New guy turns up, starts | printing off a whole bunch of highly classified docs that don't | relate to his actual job and then suddenly has to leave due to | a vague "family illness". | | He is basically a walking profile of insider threat behaviour | modeling. | | I don't think it was anything other than his stupidity that put | him on the radar so quickly. Reading the indictment it's clear | he was a bit of an idiot. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | Yeah, but... why does a new guy even _have access_ to a bunch | of highly classified docs that don 't relate to his actual | job? That's an epic fail by the NSA. I mean, good job | catching him. Now close the door that he walked through when | he found it open. | dexterdog wrote: | Probably because far too many docs have a security tag on | them just in case. | teraflop wrote: | The affidavit says that he had access to more documents | than he was supposed to because of a "misconfiguration". Or | at least, that's what he told the undercover agent. | | Given that his access of the documents was logged anyway, | it wouldn't surprise me if the misconfiguration was itself | a honeypot, using documents that are relatively low-value | but still classified. | thakoppno wrote: | Wonder what the content of the documents is if they | indeed are a honeypot? Presumably one wouldn't put any | actual secrets but that presents the problem that one | would need to know the real secrets to plant fake ones. | Additionally the fake ones would implicate some real | person, presumably which is problematic if a | sophisticated hacker exfiltrated successfully without | detection. | | I could never get anything done in espionage. I'm far too | paranoid. | conductr wrote: | The files were in a folder called "NeWgUyHoNeYpOt". That's | meant as a joke but could very well be true in this case. | momothereal wrote: | I'm thinking some non-targeted honeypot, given he reached out | to the undercover agent directly... | bl_valance wrote: | And he also had access to classified (top)secret level | documents, unless I misunderstood wrong, how is that possible | in that short amount of time? | klyrs wrote: | A friend of mine did an internship for NSA, he needed top | secret clearance just to get a foot in the door. | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | The background investigations take months to complete. | wil421 wrote: | Thought the same myself. There was a skunkworks documentary a | long time ago with engineers who worked on the program. Their | cover was TV technicians or something else bland. He said one | time he was approached by a women at a bar who was way out of | his league. She was pushy and questioned about his work for a | while. The engineer always thought it was a test by the | government. | spookie wrote: | I don't blame him lol | rootos wrote: | Why not lie to her about everything and bang her anyway? | mhh__ wrote: | (Risk of) Blackmail. Oldest trick in the book. | | It doesn't even need to be true, just needs to be | compelling. | [deleted] | bsder wrote: | If you were married, this would likely be blackmail | material. | | Occasionally, though, it does work like you say. I think | there was some Asian(?) politician that they tried to | blackmail after something like this, and he basically said: | "Hey, could you send me a copy of the sex tape? She was | smokin' hot, and I'd love to have the video." | duskwuff wrote: | Sukarno (no last name), first president of Indonesia. | | https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-cia-and-kgb-tried- | to-bl... | aliqot wrote: | Didn't an agency also target Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. | this way as well, or am I thinking of someone else? | [deleted] | raincom wrote: | He worked there for three WEEKS, not even a month. A weird vibe | to this whole saga. | [deleted] | anigbrowl wrote: | If I was going to work in that sector I would kind of assume | that any delightful surprises or exciting new people I met | outside of work had strings attached for _at least_ the first | year or two. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | sounds like you would end up like George Clooney's character | in Burn After Reading. | arthurcolle wrote: | Such a funny movie. "THIS... IS... A... CRUCIFIXION. THIS | IS POLITICAL." _sticks out arms in classic crucifixion | style_ | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | Everyone subject to a background investigation in this sphere | has their 4A rights suspended by executive order. They can and | will apply all forms of domestic surveillance on such people. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-09-29 23:00 UTC)