Jack Teixeira and the War on the Warped Internet: The Anatomy of Online Leaky US Military Documents for the Lulz
Jack Teixeira, wearing a green t-shirt and bright red gym shorts with his hands above his head, walked slowly backward toward the armed federal agents outside his home in North Dighton, Massachusetts, who took him into custody on charges of leaking classified documents.
The carefully choreographed arrest of the 21-year-old Air National Guardsman stood in stark contrast to the Biden administration’s scramble one week earlier to deal with the fallout from the revelation that highly classified documents had been sitting publicly on the internet for weeks.
To get to the root of the leak, the Biden administration needed to determine the identity of the person who posted the folded up documents online and to soothe allies who were angry that their secrets would be made public.
The damage assessment is going on despite the arrest of the suspected leaker. It is not known if the full impact of the leaks is known, as details from additional classified documents continued to be published throughout the week, even after his arrest.
The intelligence briefings for Milley, the top US military general, were part of the daily intelligence briefings on the leaked documents. The slides in that deck are accessible by hundreds of people on a daily basis.
If you had “leaking classified US military documents for the lulz” on your 2023 Bingo card, congratulations. The news this week dealt with the online disclosure of top- secret material. There is one important thing we can glean from this leak, and that is that it may be only the beginning.
Sources said that it was unlikely that the most recent leak would have been stopped by those safeguards. “All classified systems have multiple levels of risk controls, but a determined insider will find the weak points over time,” said a former US official.
The Pentagon has already taken steps to clamp down on who can access sensitive classified material, while Austin has ordered a review over access to classified documents. The US intelligence community failed to discover its secrets when they were sitting on an internet forum for weeks.
In a statement acknowledging the extent of the problem, President Joe Biden instructed the military and intelligence community to take steps to further secure and limit distribution of sensitive information.
“This is a breakdown,” Chris Krebs, the former head of the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency, told CNN. There will be a lot of internal and external reflection from the intelligence community and the government. Is there a way to make sure that military discipline is not loosened to ensure that these things don’t happen?
A CNN Watchdog Investigates the Investigation of Teixeira’s Account of Work at the Moscow-Ukraine Military Consultation (Russian Warfare)
On Wednesday, a day before Teixeira’s arrest, the FBI obtained records from Discord that included the subscriber information of the server’s administrator, which had Teixeira’s name and address, according to the affidavit.
The affidavit states that the user told investigators that Teixeira took the documents to his home to be photographed and that he was afraid he would be found out in the workplace.
Investigators wrote in the affidavit that at least one of the documents that described the status of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, including troop movements, was classified at the TS-SCI level, meaning it contains top-secret, sensitive compartmentalized information.
According to the affidavit, the Government Document contains sensitive U.S. intelligence, gathered through classified sources and methods.
His job was not to be the one packaging the intelligence for those senior commanders, but rather to work on the network on which that highly classified intelligence lived. The official said that Teixeira would need to have a clearance if he was exposed to that level of intelligence.
The official said that it was not the same as a help desk where you call and get someone to fix your computer. They have to get that clearance since they are working on a very highly classified system.
CNN has reviewed 53 documents that were posted on social media sites, which include US intelligence assessments of Ukrainian and Russian forces, as well as details about other countries providing weapons to Ukraine and other intelligence matters. The Washington Post has reported on an additional tranche of documents from the server.
The photos showed crumpled documents laid on top of magazines and surrounded by other random objects, such as zip-close bags and Gorilla Glue, suggesting they had been hastily folded up and shoved into a pocket before being removed from a secure location.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/15/politics/pentagon-leak-week-long-scamble/index.html
The Pentagon Investigated The New York Times Leaked Public Spectator Papers: Timing the Foreign-Intelligence Conversation with Biden
The Pentagon launched an investigation after The New York Times reported on the leaked documents on April 6.
The Pentagon focused on a damage assessment of the leaks themselves while the Justice Department looked into the leaker.
Even though Teixeira emerged quickly as the most obvious suspect, counterintelligence agents trained in uncovering foreign spies looked through Teixeira’s background to try to find any sign that he could be working with a foreign intelligence service.
Anthony Ferrante, a former FBI agent, said that the “first few hours are critical” in a case like the Discord leaks as investigators rush to preserve digital evidence before it becomes harder to find online or vanishes altogether.
FBI agents likely worked backward from the initial Discord posts to build a profile of the leaker, combing through his other online accounts to “put a human behind a keyboard,” Ferrante, who is now global head of cybersecurity at FTI Consulting, told CNN.
Without the intense public attention, agents might have watched him for weeks to make sure he hadn’t met anyone he wasn’t supposed to meet.
The phone was used by Austin and Milley to speak with US allies and partners about the sensitive intelligence and top-secret files that suddenly appeared in the public sphere. Those conversations were expected to continue through the end of the week, another US official said.
Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman was tapped to lead the diplomatic response to the leaked US intelligence documents, according to a US official familiar with the matter.
Biden was continually briefed on the state of the investigation while abroad, as well as the efforts of his top officials to engage with allies over the leaked information, officials said. One official acknowledged that Biden’s foreign trip was a personal matter and that the effort was behind the scenes.
When Biden made his first comments about the leak, he downplayed its significance. There is nothing to be concerned about, Biden told reporters Thursday.
Breaking the Silence: Hacking in the Jungle: Discord Leak Us Integral Security Roundup from Montana State Legislature and a Case Study of TikTok
Anyone worried about chaos agents of a different variety now have a new way to protect their online identities. New tools have been rolled out byLinkedIn this week that will allow you to verify your identity. We showed users how to use Apple’s all-in-one password manager.
While your personal security might be moving in the right direction, ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) aren’t so lucky. This week we explored the world of “jailbreaking” generative AI tools, which allows users to trick the powerful chatbots into doing things that their creators have tried to stop. It’s still early days in the world of LLM hacking, but it’s a safe bet that we’ll be hearing a lot more about this in the months to come.
Montana lawmakers voted to ban downloads of TikTok. Governor Greg Gianforte is expected to sign the unprecedented legislation into law, despite the likelihood of swift legal and technical challenges.
But that’s not all. Each week, we round up the stories we didn’t report in-depth ourselves. The full stories can be read on the headlines. Stay safe, and stay safe.
Source: https://www.wired.com/story/discord-leak-us-intel-security-roundup/
Investigating the alleged link to the 21-year-old’s t-secret chat to the Washington Post heave, or What the US intelligence agency can do about it
The 21-year-old is alleged to have shown off top-secret intel in order to get into the chat room. The chat consisted of two dozen adolescent boys and young men who, according to The Washington Post, largely did not understand the significance of the leak.
Monitoring chatter in public chat rooms is commonplace for law enforcement. Civil Liberties experts say US intelligence agencies will be in trouble if they decide to surveil private conversations. Glenn Gerstell, a former General Counsel of the National Security Agency told NBC News that the United States government does not want to have a system where it monitors private internet chats.