WASHINGTON — The head of the CIA says he was “outraged” by a teenager’s hacking of his personal AOL email account.
“What it does is to underscore just how vulnerable people are to those who want to cause harm and the social engineering that goes on and the manipulation of the system allows individuals to carry our criminal activities against US citizens,” Director John Brennan said at George Washington University.
“I think it does epitomize, in many respects, what we have to deal with in this increasingly modern and interconnected world. It’s a reality of the 21st century.”
The cyber break-in was first reported last week by The Post.
Brennan didn’t explain why someone in his position still has an AOL account that a teenager was able to access.
He admitted the incident left him fuming.
“I was certainly outraged by it,” Brennan said. “I certainly was concerned about what people might try to do with that information.”
At the same time, he scolded some media outlets over reports about the leak of his personal documents, which he claimed gave a false impression that he had done something improper.
“I was also dismayed at how some of the media handled it and the inferences there were,” he added.
The teen, working with a group called “Crackas With Attitude,” said he fooled Verizon into providing him with Brennan’s personal data.
The hacker said he used a reverse phone-number lookup to determine that Brennan has a Verizon Wireless account.
He then called the company, posing as a technician whose “tools were down” to get details about the account, including Brennan’s AOL email address.
With that information, the teen called AOL and convinced a representative to reset the password, using Brennan’s personal details provided by Verizon.
“Like a 5-year-old could do it,” one of the group’s hackers told the online magazine Motherboard.
The CIA chief’s swiped documents are largely draft forms of agency memos and other notes. Nothing in the account appears to be classified.
One document — Brennan’s security-clearance background form — contains personal information about his wife and family members, including addresses, birthdays and Social Security numbers.
Federal officials are investigating the data theft but have yet to make an arrest.