Newspaper of choice: The Telegraph

Introduction of the newspaper: The Telegraph is a daily broadsheet newspaper that is known for
its conservative opinions and right-wing support. This open support also caused it to be nicknamed “tory-
graph” by certain communities. It is considered to be one of the “Big 3” quality broadsheet newspapers
of United Kingdom, along with The Times and Guardian.

Title of the article: “British 15-year-old gained access to intelligence operations in Afghanistan
and Iran by pretending to be head of CIA, court hears”

Source:http://web.archive.org/web/20180124185258/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/
01/19/british-15-year-old-gained-access-intelligence-operations-afghanistan/

(Archived from the original on 2018-01-25)

Who was involved?: A then-15-year-old British teenager named Kane Gamble, CIA Director John
Brennan, and FBI’s Deputy Director Mark Giuliano are invovled in the incident.

What happened?: A 15-year-old teenager gained access to the personal devices of various highly
placed officials and first leaked information about intelligence operations held in Middle East, and
second harrassed them and their partners. The article details his former offence by stating that he
posted sensitive information about some operations on Twitter, and that he gained access to FBI
databases. As for his latter offence, he downloaded pornographic content on the devices he got control
of, taunted his victims by phone calls, and released personal information about his victims’ family.

When did it take place?: The offences happen at various times during a time period of two years.
We are able to deduce that he committed his first offence at the year of 2014 by looking at the age
stated on the title (15) and using it combined with the given information that he turned 16 at the
October of 2015. His “reign of chaos” is brought to an end in the February of 2016 when he got caught
after accessing an FBI database that was intended to be used by the law enforcement officials.
 Where did it take place?: Teenager Kane committed all of his offences in his bedroom on the
internet, thousands of miles away from his victims. The news article says that he lived with his mother in
her home in Leicestershire county of United Kingdom. His victims’ whereabouts are not explicitly stated
but as they are high ranking officials in various USA intelligence agencies, readers can assume they are in
United States of America.

How did it happen?: The teenager pretended to be his victims and used his social engineering
skills to persuade different helpdesk and technichal support employees to give information about
“himself” and to reset “his” passwords. Using one of these passwords he was able to log into CIA
Director John Brennan’s cloud storage account. There he found secret information about intelligence
operations which he leaked promptly after, and personal information about the director’s wife and him.
His second and last offence was gaining access to the FBI database by means of similar methods.
Prosecutor John Lloyd-Jones QC draws special attention to the nature of these actions and reminds
people that the offendors were not actual “hackers” but social engineers who gain information by
manipulating people.

Why did it happen?: The young culprit condemns the US government for their alleged “corrupt
and cold-blooded” actions, and states this as the reason for his actions. The fact that he shared the
leaked information on social network Twitter with a “#freePalestine” hashtag shows that he isn’t pleased
with the US’s stance and actions on this matter. His defence experts, hovewer, argue that he is on the
autistic spectrum and his retarded mental development (12-13 at the time of the incident) is the cause of
his actions, rather than his view of world.