A young man guilty of hacking several three-letter US agencies has been sentenced today to two years in prison, according to a press release from the Department of Justice.
Andrew Otto Boggs, 23, of North Wilkesboro, North Carolina was part of a hacking group named Crackas With Attitude (CWA), which between late 2015 and early 2016 has hacked a large number of government agencies and officials, and have dumped sensitive data on the Internet.
Group has a short history, but many hacks
The group became famous in late 2015 when they hacked the personal AOL account of then CIA boss John Brennan.
Following this initial incident, the group started a hacking rampage and later gained access to personal or work email accounts for FBI Deputy Director Mark Giuliano, US National Intelligence Director James Clapper, and President Barack Obama’s Senior Advisor on science and technology John Holdren.
CWA also gained access to JABS (US national arrests database), IC3 (FBI Internet crime-reporting portal), and VCC (a data sharing tool for law enforcement agencies).
In addition, the group dumped online the details of 2,400 US government officials, 80 Miami police officers, 9,000 DHS employees, and 20,000 FBI staffers.
There are unconfirmed rumors that the last data dump is where the hackers made their biggest mistakes. The group dumped the data online via the CryptoBin service. Hours later, the service went down, and many suspected law enforcement had seized CryptoBin’s servers in order to track down the group.
After this incident, the group’s members started getting arrested left and right.
All group members arrested in the span of nine months
First to fall was CWA member Derp, a 16-year-old teen arrested by UK cops on January 25, 2016. The second was the group’s leader, another 16-year-old UK teen known as Cracka, arrested in early February. A week later, UK cops arrested a Scottish 15-year-old who was known online as Cubed.
The last two arrests took place in September 2016 when US authorities arrested Boggs, known as CWA member Incursio, and Justin Gray Liverman, 24, of Morehead City, North Carolina, known online as D3f4ult.
While legal proceedings are still ongoing in the UK, both Boggs and Liverman pleaded guilty in January. Boggs was sentenced first, while Liverman will hear his sentence in over a month, on July 28.
In total, US authorities say CWA targeted four US government agencies and ten individuals, causing damages of over $1.5 million.
During its existence, the CWA group heavily advertised their hacks, gave interviews to media members, and promoted the #FreePalestine movement.
Source:https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hacker-incursio-gets-two-years-in-prison-for-hacking-cia-dhs-doj-and-fbi/
Working as a cyber security solutions architect, Alisa focuses on application and network security. Before joining us she held a cyber security researcher positions within a variety of cyber security start-ups. She also experience in different industry domains like finance, healthcare and consumer products.
