Joshua Schulte: Former CIA hacker sentenced to 40 years in prison
A former CIA operative has been handed a 40-year prison sentence for divulging a cache of classified hacking tools to the whistleblowing platform Wikileaks.
Joshua Schulte, also convicted of possessing illicit images involving child abuse, was found guilty of leaking the CIA’s “Vault 7” arsenal, enabling intelligence operatives to infiltrate smartphones and employ them as eavesdropping devices.
Prosecutors labeled the breach as one of the most audacious in American annals.
According to the US Department of Justice, Schulte, aged 35, transmitted approximately 8,761 documents to Wikileaks in 2017, constituting the CIA’s most extensive data breach.
Despite refuting the accusations, he was convicted across multiple federal trials in New York spanning 2020, 2022, and 2023. His sentencing on Thursday encompassed charges of espionage, computer intrusion, contempt of court, providing false statements to the FBI, and possession of child abuse materials.
According to evidence shared at the trial, Schulte was employed as a software developer in the Center for Cyber Intelligence, which conducts cyber espionage against terrorist organizations and foreign governments.
Prosecutors said that 2016 he transmitted the stolen information to Wikileaks and then lied to FBI agents about his role in the leak.
They said that he was seemingly motivated by anger over a workplace dispute.
Schulte had been struggling to meet deadlines and Assistant US Attorney Michael Lockard said one of his projects was so far behind schedule that he had earned the nickname “Drifting Deadline”.
The prosecutors said he wanted to punish those he perceived to have wronged him and said in “carrying out that revenge, he caused enormous damage to this country’s national security”.
Wikileaks began publishing classified data from the files in 2017.
The leak, prosecutors said, “immediately and profoundly damaged the CIA’s ability to collect foreign intelligence against America’s adversaries; placed CIA personnel, programs, and assets directly at risk; and cost the CIA hundreds of millions of dollars.”
The FBI interviewed Schulte several times after WikiLeaks published the data, where he denied responsibility.
A search of his apartment, prosecutors said, later revealed “tens of thousands of images of child sexual abuse materials”.
They added that after his arrest, Schulte attempted to transmit more information. He smuggled a phone into jail where he attempted to send a reporter information about CIA cyber groups and drafted tweets that included information about CIA cyber tools under the name Jason Bourne, a fictional intelligence operative.
He has been held behind bars since 2018.
