- 3 weeks ago
This is a documentary about the Cracks With Attitude hacking incident. A group of young hackers targeted the US government and intelligence agencies, successfully obtaining account information from several high-ranking officials, including the then-CIA director. This incident later triggered a massive investigation, making them a prime target for US law enforcement. This video will tell you how these young hackers operated, what methods they used, and how the entire incident ultimately unfolded. This video is for documentary, educational, and informational purposes only and does not encourage any illegal intrusion or cybercrime.
Category
🎈
FunTranscript
00:01It's October 2015, a chilly day in autumn.
00:05John Brennan receives a weird phone call.
00:07It seems to be coming from a stranger.
00:09He hesitates a second, then picks up.
00:14Hello?
00:15John Brennan?
00:17Who is this?
00:19You're a f***ing loser.
00:21If John Brennan hadn't been John Brennan,
00:23this might have looked like an ordinary prank call.
00:26But John Brennan happens to be one of the most powerful men on Earth,
00:29the head of the CIA.
00:31Who is this?
00:32How did you get this number?
00:34It was so f***ing easy, bro.
00:35You're such a d***.
00:37What do you want?
00:38I don't want anything.
00:39I already f***ing own you.
00:41How much do you want?
00:42We want five trillion dollars.
00:44The US government will classify this call as part of a larger conspiracy of identity theft,
00:49harassment of government officials, and cyber terrorism.
00:52The caller will pay a heavy price for this moment of trollish glory.
00:56Why are you doing this?
00:58We want you to stop bombing the Middle East.
01:02Across the Atlantic, in a house in the West Midlands of England,
01:06a 15-year-old kid in his room, the phone still in his hand.
01:09He can't believe what he just did.
01:12He calls himself Cracker, and he loves to smoke weed.
01:15In fact, he's high right now.
01:17He's also the leader of Crackers with Attitude.
01:19He and his companions terrorized and embarrassed the US security apparatus to a near incomparable degree.
01:24They leaked the personal data of police officers, FBI agents, and DOJ officials.
01:29They hand-delivered top secret documents to Julian Assange.
01:32Some of the most publicized hacktivism attributed to Anonymous.
01:36They call themselves Anonymous.
01:38Yeah, it was actually them.
01:40In part for the LOLs.
01:42And this is their story.
01:44This was political.
01:46Teenager.
01:46Cyber attacks.
01:47Hijacked the computers of several US intelligence and security.
01:51To the collective called Crackers with Attitude.
02:022008 in Virginia.
02:03A different kid, who only calls himself Default.
02:06He is a pretty typical American teenager.
02:08He loves soccer, video games, and his dog.
02:11He often clashes with his father, who works in the government.
02:14At some point, Default starts cheating in his video games.
02:17This gives him the first taste of using computers to do things that you're not supposed to.
02:22Exciting, powerful things.
02:24He starts learning all that he can about how computers work.
02:27And how to get them to bend to your will.
02:302008 was an exciting time to get into hacking.
02:33The decentralized hacktivist group, Anonymous, was in its heyday.
02:36If you managed to get into their secret chats, you got a front seat view of their actions.
02:40Anonymous is one of the biggest online vigilante groups.
02:43Members hacked into companies and governments.
02:46Now a worldwide and widely recognized hacking group.
02:49Hackers with the group Anonymous.
02:50Citizens of the world.
02:52We have seen the erosion of view process.
02:54A cyber war.
02:55Anonymous.
02:56Anonymous.
02:56Anonymous has struck again.
02:58Young Default is fascinated.
03:01Anonymous embodies an exciting spirit of freedom through chaos.
03:05They showed how you could force the whole world to pay attention without you having to leave your bedroom.
03:09Some anonymous actions are political.
03:11Some are just trolling.
03:13And Default, after tasting this very new kind of power, is keen to learn everything he can about hacking.
03:18He starts to hack random websites just for the challenge of it.
03:22Just to see if he can.
03:24But after hanging around Anonymous' chats for a while, he starts to find the group.
03:29Well, cringe.
03:30For one thing, it's crawling with feds.
03:33People are getting arrested.
03:34And it's tough to know who to trust.
03:36Anonymous has become so big that vetting people becomes difficult.
03:40There's tons of infighting and doxing.
03:43Since it's the only hacktivist group most media outlets know about, Anonymous keeps getting credited for the work of other,
03:49often more sophisticated hackers.
03:51It's a mess.
03:53So Default gets involved with offshoot hacker groups, one of them called Anonsec.
03:59The group positions itself as anti-anonymous.
04:02But similar to Anonymous, Anonsec performs operations, hacking initiatives that sometimes have a political purpose.
04:09And sometimes are just, as one might say in 2008, for the lols.
04:19Anonsec is quite advanced, and Default gets better and better at the game.
04:23The group controls a botnet.
04:25A botnet is essentially a large pack of infected computers under someone's control.
04:29You can use those computers to further spread malware across the internet to make the botnet larger and larger.
04:35Or you could, for example, attack a server with it, in order to overload it.
04:40Default is tapping around Anonsec's botnet, and gets curious about how the botnet works.
04:43Default thinks about what computers they've actually gotten under their control.
04:46He finds that one is a server of the Canadian medical school, Windsor University.
04:50Suddenly, Default finds himself with direct access to the university's finances.
04:55He pulls up records of students who owe the school money.
04:58It all adds up to 9.4 million dollars.
05:01And at the bottom of the list, something very tempting.
05:05A delete all button.
05:07How could he not push it?
05:12These people might really enjoy having their slate wiped clean, as it were.
05:20If you look, some of them owe a substantial amount of money.
05:2370,000, I think some people owed upwards of over 100,000.
05:30It's a lot of money.
05:31You know what I'm saying?
05:31It's perpetual debt that sometimes just lasts for decades.
05:36So, I just deleted everything.
05:42I went into the PHP shell and sent everything to DevKnow and shredded it.
05:48So, whatever I sent there is just not coming back.
05:53This is from the podcast Darknet Diaries.
05:56They have a fantastic episode with Default.
05:58Of course, this story poses some questions.
06:01We tried asking the university if the debt stayed deleted.
06:04They did not answer.
06:06But usually, student loans have multiple on and offline and off-site backups.
06:11There should be hard copies of the student's signed loan agreements.
06:14However, Default feels like he's really doing something at the time.
06:18There is a certain rush to committing a crime.
06:21When it feels like doing the right thing.
06:25Other hackers might have used the sensitive student information to make a profit.
06:28There's actually a shadow industry worth billions surrounding our most sensitive data.
06:33So-called data brokers gather all the info available about us on the internet.
06:37Your contact information, browsing history, and online transactions.
06:41This data is often bundled into shadow profiles, which are then being sold.
06:45You might receive a tailored mail or a robocall based on your shadow profile.
06:49In the worst case, someone might try to steal your identity.
06:52Incogni helps you remove your data from the numerous lists of data brokers.
06:55The only thing you have to do is create an account and allow Incogni to act on your behalf.
07:00Afterwards, you can easily track the status of all the requests in the dashboard.
07:04Check out incogni.com slash furrentv for an exclusive 60% discount on a one-year plan using the code
07:10furrentv.
07:12Additionally, benefit from a 30-day money-back guarantee.
07:14Despite Incogni's efforts, some of your data might still linger online.
07:18Always remain cautious when sharing personal information anywhere.
07:21By trying out Incogni, you're actively supporting our channel.
07:26More and more of Default's hacks are motivated by altruism rather than just curiosity.
07:31As recently as 2014, bestiality was legal in Denmark.
07:35Other European countries, Germany, the UK, Sweden, had recently banned it.
07:40What this meant for Denmark was an increase in animal sex tourism.
07:43For years, Danish animal rights activists tried to bring attention to this.
07:47They called them dog brothels.
07:50So sick.
07:51It's so crazy.
07:54And I had a dog.
07:56So that really pissed me off.
07:58Just thinking about the fact, what if someone took my dog?
08:01And that happened to my dog.
08:03I would freak out.
08:04So, as Default describes it, he and other Anon Sec hackers lend their technical skills to the animal rights movement.
08:10So we, I think we took down the official Denmark government website and then we actually defaced it, you know,
08:24and said,
08:24Did you know that your government allows bestiality?
08:28And there's bestiality dens where people can go and pay money to do these things to animals.
08:36And most of them are like people's pets.
08:40They shut down bestiality websites via DDoS attacks and tweet evidence of sexually mistreated animals.
08:46The information reverberates around the world and is widely condemned.
08:50Anonymous gets credit for Anon Sec's actions, which deeply annoys Default.
08:54But it works.
08:55In part due to the hacks, more people know about Danish dog brothels.
08:59They talk about them online, protest them, until the case winds up in parliament.
09:04In April 2015, Denmark finally bans bestiality.
09:11While Default is leveling up as a hacker, he also becomes an early adopter of crypto.
09:16He accumulates a significant amount of bitcoin, more than 1000.
09:20This would amount to a lot of money today, somewhere around 40 million US dollars.
09:26He keeps these bitcoins on a hard drive in his room.
09:29He also knows he's making powerful enemies, so he gets a bit paranoid, a bit fanatical with his OPSEC.
09:35He never logs into his own wifi, for one.
09:37He uses a satellite dish to log into a free Dairy Queen wifi half a mile away.
09:42He's always connecting through a Tor node.
09:45Every time he turns off his devices, he makes sure they're encrypted.
09:48When he turns them back on, he has to wait 30 minutes for them to decrypt.
09:52For the most part, he never tells anybody what he is doing.
09:56He knows he has a lot to lose.
09:58Ultimately, it won't be enough.
10:07Back in May 2013, a 29 year old US intelligence contractor also has a lot to lose.
10:13He has his own home in Honolulu, a loving girlfriend, and a salary of over $200,000 per year.
10:20But he's discovered a huge secret, and it's too big to keep.
10:23The US government has the ability to spy on pretty much any man, woman, child on earth,
10:28who has come into contact with a computer.
10:31And this contractor, unwittingly, has helped make that technology possible.
10:35He's haunted by this information, and horrified that his government is violating its public civil rights so egregiously.
10:42He knows that revealing this information to anyone, a lawyer, a judge, or even Congress,
10:47would be committing felonies so severe that he would spend a lifetime in prison.
10:51He's worried he'll never see his family again, and he doesn't know what consequences they'll encounter if he blows the
10:57whistle.
10:58But he has to do it.
10:59He's been quietly collecting evidence of this secret for a while,
11:02and he's just downloaded the last documents.
11:05He tells his employer, the US government, that he needs a couple of weeks off to manage his epilepsy.
11:10This buys him a bit of time to leave the country without arousing suspicion.
11:14He chooses Hong Kong because he views it as a bastion of free speech.
11:18He believes it's one of the few places in the world that could, and would, protect him from the wrath
11:23of the US government.
11:25There he meets journalists Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald,
11:28and delivers evidence of what used to be waved off as a conspiracy theory.
11:32And so Edward Snowden becomes one of the most important whistleblowers of our modern time.
11:38Snowden's revelations scandalize the world,
11:40and spark a long overdue debate about individual privacy versus national security.
11:46He inspires many young Americans like Default to take a good hard look at how their government functions.
11:52Default doesn't want to sit around and let surveillance happen to him.
11:55He wants high-ranking intelligence officials to know what it feels like to be spied upon,
12:00to have their private information stored and distributed, and to have it used against them.
12:05This is when he teams up with the Krakas with Attitude, founded by Krakka, the kid who's always high.
12:18Leicestershire, England, 2015.
12:20In a housing estate on the outskirts of a sleepy former mining town, there's not a lot to do except
12:25get high or go online.
12:26In the case of 15-year-old Krakka, he spends his time doing both.
12:30He's angry about corruption, about surveillance, but in particular, about the US's involvement in the Middle East.
12:37He becomes especially focused on Palestine and sees the US as directly responsible for death and suffering in Gaza.
12:43He decides to do something about it.
12:46This was political. We heard he was really angry about US foreign policy.
12:51So he started a collective called Krakka's with Attitude, and then he hacked into sensitive documents online.
12:58One of his first victims is James Klapper, then the National Director of Intelligence of the Obama Administration.
13:05Klapper, one of the highest ranking members of the intelligence community, had his phone number and address waiting to be
13:10found with just one Google search.
13:12This provides Krakka with enough information to hack into his email.
13:15He posts proof of it on Twitter, which catches Default's attention.
13:19Krakka then gets the phone calls to Klapper's house phone rerouted to the Free Palestine Movement.
13:24Default tweets his respect to Krakka, then the two start chatting.
13:27Edward Snowden himself has given James Klapper a very special shout out in an interview with the German broadcaster ARD.
13:34Unfortunately, that interview was blocked from US and German television networks.
13:38Apparently, the video is immediately taken down every time it's posted on YouTube.
13:42So we'll only show the quotes visually.
13:44I would say sort of the breaking point is seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Klapper, directly lie under
13:52oath to Congress.
13:53What we do not do is spy unlawfully on Americans, or for that matter, spy indiscriminately on the citizens of
13:59any country.
14:00We only spy for valid foreign intelligence purposes, as authorized by law, with multiple layers of oversight to ensure we
14:08don't abuse our authorities.
14:09Krakka and Default are livid.
14:12Krakka and other hackers loosely connected with CWA team up to target more high ranking members of the intelligence community.
14:18They want to embarrass them, and to show them that they aren't as powerful as they think they are.
14:22At the top of their list is John Brennan, head of the CIA.
14:33Brennan, like Klapper, has enough information online that he basically doxes himself.
14:38Krakka looks up his publicly posted phone number and finds out it's a Verizon number.
14:42He calls up Verizon's internal tech support and pretends to be an on-site technician who's having trouble helping a
14:47customer on-site.
14:48Tech support asks Krakka for his employee code, and he just makes one up on the spot.
14:53It works.
14:54The support technician provides Krakka with access, and suddenly he has the account number, the PIN, and John Brennan's private
15:01email address.
15:02If you have just enough information on someone, pieced together from different sources, say, their address and the last four
15:08digits of their social security number,
15:10you can easily change the passwords on all kinds of accounts and take it over.
15:15And that's exactly what Krakka does with Brennan's AOL account.
15:23Once he's in the email account, Krakka gets Brennan's private cell number and shares it with Default.
15:28And so they start spam calling the director of the CIA, relentlessly calling him and his family.
15:43John Brennan is freaked out.
15:45Sure, the calls are little more than a prank, but how could he know that?
15:48At the time, nobody knew who was behind the calls, or what their intentions were.
15:53Brennan has to lay low for a while in hiding, with extra security details for himself and his family.
15:58At the same time, Krakka's breach into Brennan's email gives him access to sensitive documents.
16:04Krakka first posts screenshots on Twitter, but then, egged on by default and maybe asking himself what would Snowden do,
16:10he decides to hit up WikiLeaks.
16:12Julian Assange himself takes interest.
16:14He publishes the documents in October 2015.
16:18They include Brennan's 47-page SF-86 application,
16:22a sensitive form required for obtaining top-secret government security clearance.
16:25The form reveals his criminal history, psychological records, past drug abuse,
16:30and other details that nobody would want about themselves online.
16:33Not only that, from Brennan's emails, WikiLeaks publishes Bush-era recommendations
16:37for how the presidency should operate in the Middle East.
16:40There is also an internal congressional correspondence from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
16:44that offered suggestions on how to make future interrogation methods, also known as torture, compliant and legal.
16:51The breach cost the agency $1.5 million in damages and relocation costs,
16:56as several operatives went into hiding before they knew that there was basically no threat level.
17:01Above all, it was widely embarrassing.
17:04Hacking into Brennan's email was laughably easy.
17:07If this is true, and it's true that you guys have actually broken into his private email account,
17:11how difficult would you say it is?
17:14Do you mean out of 10?
17:16Sure, out of 10.
17:17One.
17:18One.
17:20There's a lot of, I guess, private information, really.
17:22It's pretty stupid, really.
17:24It's supposed to be so high in government, like head of CIA,
17:27it should be more clever.
17:29Can you give us any indication of your background?
17:32I mean, how old you are?
17:33Are you in the United States?
17:35I mean, anything you can tell me about yourself?
17:37Yeah, I'm about the age of 20 years old.
17:40I smoke pot.
17:42I live in America.
17:43And you smoke pot?
17:45Every day, every day.
17:46We wonder what John Brennan must have thought,
17:48while undoubtedly watching this in his relocation house.
17:51What fury must have built up inside him?
17:56The CWA aren't done.
17:58They release more and more information.
18:00With control over Clapper's and other operative's accounts,
18:03it's even easier to get people to give up information
18:06to in turn access further accounts and databases.
18:09They gain access to FBI's deputy director,
18:11Mark Giuliano's account.
18:12There, they discover a database with personal information
18:15of 9,000 Department of Justice officials and 20,000 FBI agents.
18:20They post it.
18:21They then get access to the Justice Department's
18:23Joint Automated Booking System,
18:25which has records on all US prisoners.
18:27They check out the records of fellow hackers like Jeremy Hammond
18:30and post those online as well.
18:32They wreak havoc and embarrass one institution after another.
18:36Did these kids really think that they were going to get away with it?
18:39At the time, I really didn't care.
18:41I just like...
18:42That was towards the end of the run.
18:44It was just like, all bets are off.
18:46You know?
18:47It had gone all the way down the rabbit hole.
18:48I had just become very disillusioned with people's complacency
18:55and their lack of care for what was going on.
18:58So it's like, we're going to bring attention to this with chaos and mayhem.
19:08Cracker knows his actions have poked a very big bear.
19:12He knows there will be consequences.
19:14He just doesn't know what they'll exactly be.
19:25Default is paranoid the whole time, constantly worried about his OPSEC.
19:31But he let his guard down.
19:33Default became involved with an ex-girlfriend of one of his friends.
19:36According to him, he asked his friend in advance if it's okay with him.
19:39The friend says, sure, go for it.
19:42He's way over it.
19:43But he isn't.
19:45Default and his friend are hanging out one night,
19:47drinking and chatting over Xbox Live.
19:49I slip up for the first time ever, being f***ing arrogant and cocky.
19:54It comes on the news, CI director hacked, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff.
19:58And I'm like, yeah, that was us, blah, blah.
20:01I was like drunk talking and just totally like gave myself away.
20:06He never thought his friend would do anything with that information.
20:09Hell, he didn't even think his friend would necessarily believe him.
20:13But today, Default is pretty sure this friend turned him in.
20:18When the FBI raids you, they don't knock politely.
20:26FBI agents enter Default's room just as his computer finishes decrypting.
20:30They are pointing assault rifles in his face.
20:32They drag him out of his room, flash copy his hard drive before it reencrypts,
20:36and seize all of his equipment.
20:37Default knows he's finished.
20:40But the worst part, watching the agents carry off his hard drive.
20:43The hard drive with nearly 1,000 Bitcoin.
20:46He blacks out.
20:51Krakow, too, gets raided by the British police forces,
20:54and his computers are confiscated.
21:01One other CWA member gets arrested in the US and three more in the UK.
21:08Since Krakow was underage and in the United Kingdom, he got a lenient sentence.
21:11He spent two years in a juvenile detention center.
21:14He was the first minor in the UK to be imprisoned for hacking.
21:17Today, he's keeping his head down and is done with crime.
21:20He just wants to make a career in cybersecurity and move on with his life.
21:24He did not want to give us an interview.
21:27Default, even though he was less involved, paid a much higher price.
21:31He went straight to federal prison with a five-year sentence.
21:33He had to pay $145,000 in restitution, and due to COVID regulations, spent a significant
21:40amount of that time in solitary confinement.
21:42While pleading in court, he said,
21:44I thought what I was doing was right in terms of political justice.
21:48But two years later, I realized I was completely wrong.
21:53Snowden, too, didn't have a relaxed time fighting asylum in Russia.
21:56Shortly after his leak, intelligence officials publicly fantasized about killing him.
22:01Whether you're a principled whistleblower who truly understands the significance of what
22:05you're leaking, or a stoned teen furious at the world's injustices, messing with the
22:09U.S. government will change the course of your life forever.
22:12So make sure it's worth it.
22:15In December 2023, the Biden administration renewed a very controversial surveillance program.
22:21The act allows the administration to spy on anyone in the world without Warren, including
22:26its own citizens.
22:27It includes a vast database of electronic communications.
22:31It's supposed to be accessed only when there's a legitimate reason to believe it will assist
22:35intelligence operations.
22:37But a U.S. court ruling in 2023 found that the FBI has already misused this database 278,000
22:44times.
22:46Unlawful searches were particularly rampant between 2016 and 2020.
22:51They've snooped in the private communications of donors to various congressional candidates.
22:55They've been watching suspected January 6 rioters, and they've also been surveilling
22:59Black Lives Matter protesters.
23:00Maybe they're even surveilling us.
23:03Maybe they're surveilling us.