Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Homecyber securityEx-CIA Official Allegedly Leaked CIA's Secret Hacking Tools To WikiLeaks

Ex-CIA Official Allegedly Leaked CIA’s Secret Hacking Tools To WikiLeaks

Published on

SIEM as a Service

Follow Us on Google News

Recently, on Monday in New York, a federal judge has announced the verdict in the case of a former CIA software engineer who was blamed for stealing a massive trove of the agency’s detailed secret hacking tools and leaking 8000 classified CIA documents to the well-known whistleblower WikiLeaks, under the name “Vault 7”.

When the jury was inadequate to give a judgment on eight counts of the crime and transmission of CIA’s private documents, it did get ex-CIA Joshua Schulte guilty on two counts of contempt of court and presenting false reports to the FBI investigators.

Thus, on March 9, 2020, a federal judge condemned Joshua Schulte of two charges of abusing the court and presenting false statements against FBI agents, as we said before.

- Advertisement - Google News

But, after four weeks of trial, there was not a clear proof that Schulte gave information after eight weeks of trials, including ‘theft of private information from the CIA,’ which should have been the main issue.

Yes! the jury did find Schulte chargeable on two counts of presenting false statements to investigators and contempt of court, reads NYTimes report.

However, the failure to give a unanimous approval on the most severe charges of revealing classified information was a vital blow to the government’s case.

Hence, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York refused to comment on this matter.

After that, during a trial that lasted more than a month, prosecutors characterized Schulte as a disgruntled employee who turned on revenge after his bosses abandoned to take his side in a conflict with a CIA co-worker.

The juror indicated last week that they were having difficulty apprehending a unanimous agreement on all of the charges.

Thus, the judge dropped one juror who showed she might have been studying about the case outside of discussions, which the judge had forbidden.

However, the Juror later stated that the government had displeased to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Joshua Schulte presented the hacking tools to WikiLeaks.

Vault 7 Leak

As Vault 7 was the most significant leak of detailed information in the intelligence agency’s history.

That revealed the CIA’s undercover cyber-weapons and spying methods that the United States government applied to monitor or crack into computers, mobile phones, televisions, webcams, video streams, and more networks worldwide.

Therefore, the court will operate the next hearing later this month to review the further steps to be taken in the case.

Meantime, Joshua Schulte will also go over a separate trial for the child-pornography case, where the charges have not been fully settled, but provide a 20-year maximum sentence.

Joshua Schulte

However, last week in a separate report printed, a Chinese cybersecurity company blamed the CIA for being after an 11-year-long hacking operation that targeted various Chinese industries and government companies.

The Researchers also accused the CIA based upon the connections between the tools and exploits flowed in the Vault 7 archive and the tools utilized on the cyberattacks.

So, what do you think about this? Simply share all your views and thoughts in the comment section below. And if you liked this post then simply do not forget to share this post with your friends and on your social profiles.

Read More:

WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Arrested at Ecuadorian Embassy in London

Ex-CIA Employee Charged for Leaking Powerful CIA Hacking Tools to WikiLeaks

Vault 8 Leaks: Wikileaks Revealed CIA’s Secret Malware Control System called “Hive” Source Code

Gurubaran
Gurubaran
Gurubaran is a co-founder of Cyber Security News and GBHackers On Security. He has 10+ years of experience as a Security Consultant, Editor, and Analyst in cybersecurity, technology, and communications.

Latest articles

WhatsApp Unveils New AI Features While Ensuring Full Message Secrecy

WhatsApp, the world’s most popular messaging platform, has announced a major expansion of artificial...

Wormable AirPlay Zero-Click RCE Flaw Allows Remote Device Hijack via Wi-Fi

A major set of vulnerabilities-collectively named “AirBorne”-in Apple’s AirPlay protocol and SDK have been...

Chrome 136 Fixes 20-Year-Old Privacy Bug in Latest Update

Google has begun rolling out Chrome 136 to the stable channel for Windows, Mac,...

Researchers Uncover SuperShell Payloads and Various Tools in Hacker’s Open Directories

Cybersecurity researchers at Hunt have uncovered a server hosting advanced malicious tools, including SuperShell...

Resilience at Scale

Why Application Security is Non-Negotiable

The resilience of your digital infrastructure directly impacts your ability to scale. And yet, application security remains a critical weak link for most organizations.

Application Security is no longer just a defensive play—it’s the cornerstone of cyber resilience and sustainable growth. In this webinar, Karthik Krishnamoorthy (CTO of Indusface) and Phani Deepak Akella (VP of Marketing – Indusface), will share how AI-powered application security can help organizations build resilience by

Discussion points


Protecting at internet scale using AI and behavioral-based DDoS & bot mitigation.
Autonomously discovering external assets and remediating vulnerabilities within 72 hours, enabling secure, confident scaling.
Ensuring 100% application availability through platforms architected for failure resilience.
Eliminating silos with real-time correlation between attack surface and active threats for rapid, accurate mitigation

More like this

Researchers Uncover SuperShell Payloads and Various Tools in Hacker’s Open Directories

Cybersecurity researchers at Hunt have uncovered a server hosting advanced malicious tools, including SuperShell...

Cyber Espionage Campaign Targets Uyghur Exiles with Trojanized Language Software

A sophisticated cyberattack targeted senior members of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), the largest...

Konni APT Deploys Multi-Stage Malware in Targeted Organizational Attacks

A sophisticated multi-stage malware campaign, potentially orchestrated by the North Korean Konni Advanced Persistent...