It is known that the leak includes a questionnaire for the official’s security clearance marked as a review copy only, text of the proposed Limitations on Interrogations Techniques Act of 2008 (legislation describing the limits of interrogation methods) and a message from Missouri Republican senator Christopher Bond, a member of the Senate select committee on intelligence.
However, all the leaked documents are dated 2008 and before, while John O.Brennan assumed office in 2013. Still, the intrusion is an embarrassment not only for Brennan and for the CIA, but also for service providers – in this case, AOL and parent company Verizon. The matter is that the hackers claimed to obtain a Verizon employee ID number and then used the last 4 digits of the CIA director’s credit card on file to reset his email password.
This hack came one day before Hillary Clinton was scheduled to testify about her own personal email account before a congressional panel. Clinton’s personal account was initially investigated in relation to the attacks on the US consulate in Libya, but now the question is about the vulnerability of government information on her communications.
This time, hackers announced they had breached Brennan’s account on Twitter and posted screenshots containing genuine social security numbers, cellphone numbers and email addresses. In the meantime, the authorities claimed that Brennan’s account contained no classified data. Twitter accounts associated with the hackers have been deleted or suspended. One of the hackers claimed to be the US high school student, not Muslim, but motivated by opposition to the country’s foreign policy and support for Palestine. It is also known that the Twitter timeline for the hackers includes many references to the United Kingdom.
