Sensitive Documents Leaked on Twitter from CIA Boss Email Hack

CIA boss, John Brennan, was in for a surprise this week as hackers were able to compromise his personal AOL email account and steal important documents and later leak them on Twitter.

Internet hackers are now bolder than ever. As it turns out, they stop at nothing when an opportunity arises to leak sensitive information from an attack on a popular entity whether it be a large company, a well-known news site, or the CIA as they have in a recent attack on CIA boss Job Brennan's AOL email account.

The hacker, who conducted the attack on John Brennan's AOL email account and later leaked sensitive documents on Twitter, goes by the Twitter name of "@phphax." The hacker managed to break into Brennan's AOL email account after him and two friends posed as Verizon employees, which later resulted in them tricking another Verizon employee into revealing Brennan's personal details from his account.

The information gathered from Verizon was enough to reset the password of Brennan's AOL email account. With full access to his email, other details were gathered along with sensitive information that was attached to various messages as attachments in his AOL email account.

While the hacking incident took place on October 12th, Brennan was not aware of what took place until a couple days later when the hackers started to slowly leak sensitive document information on Twitter. Twitter noticed the information being posted and took Brennan's account down on October 16 with AOL deactivating his email account at the same time. Unfortunately, the hackers had access to the email account for nearly three days, and it was possible that Brennan detected the intrusion and attempted to reset his password three times but the attackers were able to regain access.

Probably one of the more surprising parts of the hack was that the hackers personally called Brennan to inform him of their hack and jokingly asked for two trillion dollars. While it's quite funny, there is quite some seriousness to the matter considering the leaked data included documents that Brennan filled to get security clearance for CIA applications and projects. Additionally, data was leaked on CIA employee records and phone call logs with White House's Deputy National Security Advisor, Avril Haines, who happens to be the former CIA Deputy Director.

The same unnamed hacker responsible for the Brennan AOL email attack claims to have hacked US Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson previously. While nearly the same attempt to leak information on Twitter was attempted, Johnson's Twitter account was suspended.

For several obvious reasons, the CIA, along with the FBI, Secret Service and other US law enforcement agencies, are conducting a full investigation on the hacker, who is believed to be a US high school student. Currently, it does not appear that any classified information was leaked as a result of this hacking incident. For now, as the investigation goes on, US government officials and law enforcement will be on the lookout for future activity by this hacker that could lead them to capture the individual.