There has been a guilty plea by Airman Jack Teixeira, a 22-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman, for leaking intelligence information on Discord:
Teixeira has agreed to sit for a debrief with members of the intelligence community and the Department of Defense, court documents say, as well as turn over all relevant documents he has or knows the location of.
In exchange, prosecutors have said that they will ask a judge to impose a sentence of 200 months in prison, or over 16 years. The hefty sentence recommendation is far less time than the potential decades-long prison sentence he could have faced had he not struck a deal. Prosecutors have also promised not to charge Teixeira with additional counts under the Espionage Act, according to court documents.
“Jack Teixeira will never get a sniff of a classified piece of information for the rest of his life,” the US Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Josh Levy said at a news conference following Teixeira’s guilty plea.
“This guilty plea brings accountability, and it brings a measure of closure to a chapter that created profound harms for our nation’s security,” said Matt Olsen, the assistant attorney general for national security at the Department of Justice.
Troy Batterberry, CEO, EchoMark:
“Airman Teixeira sadly destroyed his life through his dishonorable acts that directly harmed our national security. The 102nd Intelligence Wing had their mission paused as a result of Teixeira’s actions… further spreading the pain by those who serve.
“The situation highlights that airman Teixeira had access to far too much diverse confidential information. Airman Teixeira was only caught because he was sloppy. With just a bit more care, he would never have been caught. Other leakers, who simply exercised a bit more caution, such as the person who leaked the Dobbs Supreme Court ruling to Politico, have never been caught. It highlights a BIG gap in how information is currently protected, and every major organization should be asking what harms an insider could potentially do, and how to prevent insider leaks.. The use of stenography is an exciting new way to prevent leaks from ever happening, and if they still do happen, quickly find the source.
“Every company and BoD should be asking: Do we have a Jack Teixeira in the organization? What is going to stop that person from leaking or stealing our intellectual property? Stenography can help prevent these highly damaging and sad situations from happening.”
Sadly, just as this was happening, another US airman was indicted for leaking classified docs to a woman he met on a dating app. Clearly the threat of an insider is a real problem.
New Research Links Threat Groups to Phishing Campaigns Targeting US Public School Districts
Posted in Commentary with tags PIXM on March 6, 2024 by itnerdPIXM, pioneers of the first real-time AI computer vision solution, has published its latest blog focusing on ongoing phishing activity beginning in November 2023 that is linked to two prominent threat groups: Tycoon and Storm-1575.
These MFA spear phishing attacks used common attack Phishing-as-a-Service (PhaaS) platforms and stealthy attack patterns – including Adversary-in-the-Middle (AiTM), social engineering, customized logins and robust and large-scale infrastructure – to target officials at large US school districts with the purpose of compromising key administrator email accounts and ultimately delivering ransomware.
In this attack, the school’s Chief of Human Capital and multiple finance and payroll administrators received targeted phishing emails providing them with a link to update their passwords to secure their account. Ultimately, victims were directed to pages requesting two-factor authentication codes, thus completely bypassing MFA protections.
You can read this blog here: https://pixmsecurity.com/blog/uncategorized/us-public-school-districts-targeted-mfa-spear-phishing-campaigns-on-the-rise
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