Former U.S. government employee attempted to steal nuclear weapons secrets: Justice Department

[Little Tich]

Source: yahoo! News / Reuters


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department has charged a former employee of the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for allegedly attempting an email attack on government employees to extract sensitive information on nuclear weapons.

According to an indictment unsealed on Friday, Charles Eccleston allegedly attempted the "spear-phishing" attack in January targeting dozens of email accounts, where he believed he was unleashing a virus to collect the information.

Eccleston, who has lived in the Philippines since 2011 after he was fired from the NRC in 2010, was caught in a sting by the Federal Bureau of Investigation after he approached a foreign embassy about providing classified U.S. information. Undercover FBI employees then posed as foreigners and promised to pay for the spear-fishing attack, according to the Justice Department.

Eccleston drew on his past career to draw up email lists and compose the text of an innocuous-seeming invitation to a conference that he sent to 80 Energy Department employees, according to the indictment.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/former-u-government-employee-attempted-steal-nuclear-weapons-194422837.html

[arcane1]

1. I wonder how many of them clicked on the link n/t