Teenage hacker targets US intelligence chief

‘Cracka’, the American teenage hacker who successfully targeted the email of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) head, John Brennan, in October 2015, has now reportedly hacked into a number of accounts used by US director of national intelligence, James Clapper. Clapper is a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, with his remit covering security matters such as cyber threats. Cracka, who has said that he is behind the group Crackas With Attitude (CWA), has claimed that he accessed Clapper’s work email, his home phone and internet account, and an email account belonging to his wife. Clapper’s office has reportedly only seen evidence of the breach of the director’s wife’s account and home phone. On this, Cracka altered the settings of the account so that incoming calls to Clapper’s house were redirected to the Free Palestine Movement. Remarking on the incident, security blogger, Graham Cluley said: “It’s perhaps a relief that those behind the hack were more interested in simply pranking the director of national intelligence rather than having something more menacing in mind.”

Nation's Top Spy Chief Got Hacked!





James Clapper. The same teenage hacker who broke into the AOL email inbox of CIA Director John Brennan last October has now claimed to have broken into personal email and phone accounts of the US Director of National Intelligence





Clapper was targeted by the teenage hacker, who called himself Cracka and claimed to be a member of the hacker group Crackas with Attitude (CWA) that made headlines in October for hacking into CIA Director's email and accessing several online portals and tools used by US law enforcement agencies.









Trove of Information Related to Top Spy Chief Hacked!





Cracka told Motherboard that he had access to a series of accounts connected to Clapper, including:

Home telephone account

Internet accounts

Personal email accounts

His wife's Yahoo email

The spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Brian Hale confirmed the intrusion on Tuesday, saying that they were aware of the hacking incident and had reported it to appropriate authorities. Though, he declined to provide any other details.





However, just having his hands on Clapper's online accounts wasn't enough for Cracka. He also claimed to have changed the settings of Clapper's Verizon FiOS account, so that every incoming call to his house number would get redirected to the Free Palestine Movement.

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Cracka also provided a list of call logs to Clapper's home number and what he claimed were screenshots from his wife Susan's Yahoo email account, as well as Clapper's email account, though the authenticity of the screenshots is not verified.









Here's How the Hacker Able to Do this:





The hacking incident was likely the result of social engineering techniques used to guess Clapper's passwords or security questions through research and web searches into his life or by spoofing service providers to get them to disclose information.





As CWA mentioned earlier, their actions are all in support of the Palestine cause. "I'm pretty sure they don't even know they've been hacked," Cracka told the publication.



