How Sabu Orchestrated the Hack of FBI Contractor ManTech

Daniel_Stuckey (2647775) writes Weeks after he started working quietly as an FBI informant, Hector Xavier Monsegur, known by his online alias "Sabu," led a cyber attack against one of the bureau's very own IT contractors. In July 2011, at Monsegur's urging, members of AntiSec, an offshoot of the hacking collective Anonymous, took advantage of compromised log-in credentials belonging to a contractor with a top secret security clearance employed at the time by ManTech International.

According to chat logs recorded by Monsegur at the behest of the FBI and obtained by Motherboard, the informant directed hackers to pilfer as much data as possible from ManTech's servers as investigators stood by. Stolen data was published as the third installment of AntiSec's ... collection of leaks intended to embarrass the same federal agency that presided over the hack and others.

Who did ManTech piss off?

[jandrese]

I guess someone at the FBI was not happy with ManTech? Did ManTech know about the hacks ahead of time? There's so much weird with this story.

Re:Shocked Shocked!

[jellomizer]

You are working under the impression that dealing with people works smoothly like a software program, and there exists a fully working solution. Real life is about finding the path where the benefits are better then the costs.

Your example of the informant who rats out all his enemies and competition, while means he is still scum causing problems, it does prevent the others from doing so.

But what is even as common is the low level criminal, who isn't actually trying to be a bad person, but just to make a living because he doesn't know of an other way. Getting paid to rat out other criminals, including much higher level ones, can give him money to survive the next week and avoid crime until he needs the money again.