Former NSA Employee Pleads Guilty to Taking Classified Data
Summary: Nghia Hoang Pho, 67, of Ellicott City, Maryland, pleaded guilty to willful retention of national defense information for removing and keeping highly sensitive classified documents, including Top Secret material, from his NSA Tailored Access Operations developer job between 2010 and March 2015. He is the third NSA worker charged in two years with mishandling classified data, and unnamed government officials cited by The New York Times say Russian hackers are believed to have stolen the documents after Pho installed Kaspersky Lab antivirus on his home computer.
Key Takeaway: The tools Pho took home are tied to the Shadow Brokers leaks, and DHS gave federal agencies until Dec. 12 to stop using Kaspersky software; Pho faces up to 10 years in prison at sentencing on April 6, 2018.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Data Breaches
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