List Of Targets FBI Supposedly Asked Jeremy Hammond To Crack Revealed

from the that-didn't-take-long dept

Mon, Nov 18th 2013 3:02pm — Mike Masnick

On Friday, we wrote about Jeremy Hammond's 10-year prison sentence, mentioning that the judge had required part of Hammond's statement be redacted from any reports as his discussion of the list of targets he was asked to hack by FBI informant Sabu (Hector Xavier Monsegur) was considered classified. Of course, it will come as little surprise that the unredacted/uncensored text of his original statement is alleged to have leaked soon after the sentencing. Someone posted it to Pastebin. While it's entirely possible that this is fake, there are at least some indications that it's accurate.

Sabu also supplied lists of targets that were vulnerable to "zero day exploits" used to break into systems, including a powerful remote root vulnerability effecting the popular Plesk software. At his request, these websites were broken into, their emails and databases were uploaded to Sabu's FBI server, and the password information and the location of root backdoors were supplied. These intrusions took place in January/February of 2012 and affected over 2000 domains, including numerous foreign government websites in Brazil, Turkey, Syria, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Nigeria, Iran, Slovenia, Greece, Pakistan, and others. A few of the compromised websites that I recollect include the official website of the Governor of Puerto Rico, the Internal Affairs Division of the Military Police of Brazil, the Official Website of the Crown Prince of Kuwait, the Tax Department of Turkey, the Iranian Academic Center for Education and Cultural Research, the Polish Embassy in the UK, and the Ministry of Electricity of Iraq.

Sabu also infiltrated a group of hackers that had access to hundreds of Syrian systems including government institutions, banks, and ISPs. He logged several relevant IRC channels persistently asking for live access to mail systems and bank transfer details. The FBI took advantage of hackers who wanted to help support the Syrian people against the Assad regime, who instead unwittingly provided the U.S. government access to Syrian systems, undoubtedly supplying useful intelligence to the military and their buildup for war.

All of this happened under the control and supervision of the FBI and can be easily confirmed by chat logs the government provided to us pursuant to the government's discovery obligations in the case against me. However, the full extent of the FBI's abuses remains hidden. Because I pled guilty, I do not have access to many documents that might have been provided to me in advance of trial, such as Sabu's communications with the FBI. In addition, the majority of the documents provided to me are under a "protective order" which insulates this material from public scrutiny. As government transparency is an issue at the heart of my case, I ask that this evidence be made public. I believe the documents will show that the government's actions go way beyond catching hackers and stopping computer crimes.

Again, while Hammond is responsible for actually carrying out the activity of breaking into these sites, it still seems incredibly questionable that the targets may have been suggested by the FBI, which then basically got to take advantage of Hammond's activities, and then when that wasn't useful any more, to throw him in jail for a decade.

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Filed Under: cfaa, fbi, hacking, hector monsegur, jeremy hammond, sabu, targets

14 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 18 Nov 2013 @ 3:11pm

I'm sure the reason he is in jail has nothing to do with hacking...
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Nov 2013 @ 3:21pm

Did they at least thanked Jeremy? that seems the least they could do after making him work hard for them and the CIA.
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WhatThe, 18 Nov 2013 @ 3:30pm

Who Writes These Stupid Articles
Who Writes These Stupid Articles?
"it still seems incredibly questionable "??

Gee whiz, tell us what you really think, Mr Clueless!

I don't care what the writer's opinion is, because he appears to be an idiot. So how about some journalism rather than an anonymous douche bag writing the articles. The FBI does criminal things to people all the time, as anyone who pays attention knows.
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out_of_the_blue, 18 Nov 2013 @ 3:54pm

"seems incredibly questionable"? ... Faint words won't stop tyranny.
This is the corporatized gov't that murdered at least a million people in phony wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that, as shown above, was fomenting overthrow in Syria from which we were spared only by clumsy framing of the false flag gas attack.

Mike, if you ever want credit for opposing tyranny, you're going to have stop your mealy-mouth questioning, come right out and explicitly condemn the insane banker-controlled criminals pretending to be the US gov't. At present you're just an NPC.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Nov 2013 @ 7:35pm

Sounds like the toy plane plot
Sounds like that terror plot where toy planes would be loaded with explosives and flown into crowds. Sounds plausible but only to people who haven't flown a model airplane, mine can barely carry a tiny camera. Their payload it tiny. Turned out the plane came from the FBI, as did the explosives and the plot. He was just the hot head they attached it to.

This was one of General Alexander's 'stopped terror plots'. Yet it would never have 'started' if the FBI weren't driving it.

He wouldn't have hacked into 2000 websites if the FBI weren't paying SABU to employ him to hack 2000 websites.

"remote root vulnerability effecting the popular Plesk software"

If he knows a root vulnerability in Plesk, he should report it immediately to Plesk, because the NSA will be exploiting websites.

No, hangon, Plesk is a US company, he should report it *publicly* to ensure its really fixed.
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PopeRatzo (profile), 18 Nov 2013 @ 7:43pm

That's the truth
No, hangon, Plesk is a US company, he should report it *publicly* to ensure its really fixed.

There it is. Our only hope for a future without a tyrannical corporate surveillance state is that lots of heroic whistleblowers step forward.

If there are any people out there with information like this, please step forward and make your information public. You are the only chance we have left.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Nov 2013 @ 12:13am

And yet for all the spying on Syria
things have got steadily worse there. so its not as if this spying has has a positive effect on people's lives.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Nov 2013 @ 1:48am

this is about par for the governments cause. the only thing i haven't seen yet is that Hammond is forbidden to talk about why he did what the FBI told/asked him to do. the sentence he received, however, is typical of a tyrannical government who, after using a person for their own needs, discards them with a maximum prison sentence. the judge in this case is way out of order and i hope the sentence is greatly reduced at an appeal.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Nov 2013 @ 2:44am

it's not an unredacted version of his sentencing statement, but instead part of a separate article by him. not fake either.
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anonymouse, 19 Nov 2013 @ 4:11am

appeal
As someone else has said, on appeal this case should be thrown out , he should receive compensation for being illegally detained and then the FBI personnel involved need to be called to the stand and forced to explain why they believe that a person they recruited should be jailed for what they did and if that is the true case then which of the FBI members that instigated this illegal activity , will be arrested on the same charges.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Nov 2013 @ 7:50am

" it still seems incredibly questionable that the targets may have been suggested by the FBI,"
Is this a typo? Should it read:
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The Real Michael, 19 Nov 2013 @ 8:26am

Let this case serve as an important lesson to anyone whom a federal agency taps for their computer hacking capabilities: you're expendable.
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Alt0, 19 Nov 2013 @ 8:28am

What did they have on this guy to get him to comply with their "requests"?
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Nov 2013 @ 9:57am

Re: That's the truth
Plesk isn't a company. It's a web hosting control panel. It was originally developed by Russian developers and is owned by a company named Parallels. They do have a corporate presence in the US but I'm not sure where their central location is.

http://www.parallels.com/products/plesk/
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