Government Officials under Attack: Hackers Who targeted CIA Director now reach the White House
The hacking group Crackas With Attitude have been targeting officials since October and turned out to be a nightmare for US government officials.
After compromising CIA Director John Brennan’s AOL email account, now the group have claimed another high-profile victim- John Holdren, President Barack Obama’s senior advisor on science and technology.
Motherboard reports that one group member broke into Holdren’s email account and home telephone and compromised it so that all the calls were diverted to the main office of the Free Palestine Movement.
The same mechanism has been followed, which was witnessed in the case of hacking the US National Intelligence Director James Clapper last week.
One of the group’s members described their latest feat in an email to MotherBoard on Monday, which read:
“If you don’t, believe me, you can call the home phone.”
This was followed by a message containing a phone number that belonged to Holdren as per public records. When the number was dialed, the call was picked by the Free Palestine Movement’s founder Paul Larudee.
Cubed, one member of the Cracka With Attitude group, stated that the person who compromised Holdren’s account was called Fearz or @fearhax. Cracka is another group member who told Larudee that Fearz infiltrated Holdren’s account using a spear phishing attack.
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No comments were received from the White House regarding the incident but it was confirmed that Holdren was targeted. A spokesperson for the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy stated that:
“We are aware of this issue and have reported it to law enforcement.”
The FBI also did not respond when requested for further comments.
Holdren has thus, joined the long series of victims Cracka and his group mates have managed to attack.
The group’s first victim was Brennan but then they targeted numerous other government officials including James Clapper, FBI’s Deputy Director Mark Guiliano, and ex-intelligence execute Vonna Weir Heaton.
The notorious group also managed to compromise JABS, which is a secret portal responsible for managing federal arrests records of law enforcement agencies.
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