Teen hacker compromises CIA spy chief accounts
A teenage hacker has broken into a number of accounts belonging to CIA Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and his wife.
Under the alias "Cracka," the teenager is believed to be part of the "Crackas With Attitude" (CWA) hacking group, which last hit the headlines in November after breaching a US police database.
Speaking to Motherboard, Cracka claimed to have now broken into accounts belonging to Clapper, including his home telephone, Internet services and personal email.
According to the publication, while in control of the spy chief's Verizon FiOS account, Cracka was also able to tamper with settings to reroute calls intended for Clapper's house elsewhere.
Security
If someone attempted to call the director, the phone call would be forwarded to the Free Palestine Movement, which Cracka supports.
The movement claims to advocate for the human rights of Palestinians and fights against international and Israeli restrictions imposed upon Palestine, travel and trade.
To verify the account hijacking, Motherboard was able to contact the co-founder of the movement Paul Larudee, who confirmed he was receiving calls intended for the US spy chief.
In addition, the hacker provided a set of call logs to Clapper's home number. One of the numbers included in the log belonged to Vonna Heaton, the vice president of Ball Aerospace.
"In the log, there was a number listed as belonging to Vonna Heaton, an executive at Ball Aerospace and a former senior executive at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency," Motherboard writer Lorenzo Bicchierai says. "When I called that number, the woman who picked up identified as Vonna Heaton. When I told her who I was, she declined to answer any questions."
Cracka also forwarded screenshots reportedly taken from a Yahoo email account belonging to Clapper's wife, Susan.
A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence confirmed the cyberattack, and said the agency was "aware of the matter and we reported it to the appropriate authorities."
It appears that the attack relied upon social engineering techniques and open-source data gleaned from the Internet.
Cracka took to Twitter to mock US law enforcement, as well as brand the US government as "cold-blooded killers" and "corrupt."
Last year, Crackas With Attitude infiltrated CIA director John Brennan's AOL account, which appeared to -- unwisely -- be a storage repository for a number of sensitive US documents, later published on WikiLeaks.
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