Akamai Employee Arrested and Accused of Being a Spy | Hacker News Reader

Akamai Employee Arrested and Accused of Being a Spy

securityweek.com

50 pointsprivacyguru29 comments

You gotta love how the foreign country is specifically unnamed -- another news report says it was referred to as Country X, but "It is alleged that in later communications, Doxer said his chief desire “was to help our homeland and our war against our enemies.”" Doxer is Jewish.

Here is a bit more detail:

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2010/10/07/2741170/jewish-in...

So we can probably assume he was attempting to help Israel, the country we are fiscally and militarily tied to already. Kinda funny - I wonder if he has some sort of mental illness if he didn't already realize this.

There is allegedly a huge amount of espionage directed at the US from Israel. You wouldn't have to be mentally ill to be involved in it.

And, it's probably prudent to note, directed at Israel from the US.

Israel's first nuclear bombs were believed (by the CIA) to be constructed from highly enriched uranium stolen from the US Navy nuclear fuel plant operated by the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation. So it wouldn't be completely unprecedented.

Firstly, it's a bit ridiculous that such lengths are taken to "anonymize" the country's name. Turns out it's not that hard to speculate, especially given the JTA article posted above.

What I'm really curious about is whether Country X approached the US with this information in an attempt to gain good "karma," or if the US approached Country X with an active investigation and they responded in a manner of "Oh, yeah...meant to tell you about that! Sorry!"

...or someone in Country X’s embassy decided that this guy was more likely to be a nut or an agent provocateur than someone in a position to offer really useful intelligence, and therefore there was no downside to turning the fellow in to the FBI.

He should have gone to the Russians. I hear their spying-on-America department is a little understaffed these days.

Wait, so this idiot was trying to sell information to the Israeli government from Akamai?

There is no information that Israel could possibly want that Akamai wouldn't be more than happy to simply hand over, I'm fairly certain. Given how many people who work at that company are Israeli citizens ...

That's not necessarily true. There are, I'm guessing, plenty of contracts Akamai has with the U.S. government for content delivery (the military comes to mind) that are not public knowledge and probably require some level of security clearance.

Of course, I'm just guessing here, but would you really be surprised if this were true?

I suppose things could have changed since I left, but they weren't really rigged for that sort of thing when I was there, and I was in two groups who would have been very close to that sort of thing.

The Jewish / Israeli connection is not made in the article. Why? I don't understand how this idiotic behavior was supposed to help the US anyway as Doxer said in http://www.jta.org/news/article/2010/10/07/2741170/jewish-in...

I think that the "homeland" that Doxer was referring to is Israel, not the USA.

My prediction is that unfortunately many other Jews will now be under suspicion of being disloyal if they handle sensitive information.

I agree with you. However, there comes a time when you need to choose the "homeland" you pledge allegiance to. If you don't want to make that choice and stand by it, I can understand people would become suspicious in such situations. I m a dual citizen and I of course love the US and France (where I grew up) but if the two fell on different sides of any issue, I would at least stay 100% loyal to the US because I chose to make this my home and americans welcomed me warmly. If I felt differently, I would move back to France. Maybe that guy should have done so with Israel...

<< If convicted, Doxer faces a maximum penalty of 20 years’ imprisonment, a three-year term of supervised release, a $250,000 fine or twice the gain or loss, whichever is highest, and restitution to the victim >>

The guys's clearly done something bad but that seems a bit excessive.

Stealing company secrets: termination.

Stealing company secrets because an FBI agent asks you to: 20 years in prison.

I am beginning to understand the whole "don't talk to the cops" movement.

Selling secrets to a foreign government is a very serious crime. Also, note that Akamai customers include NASA, Boeing, and the US Air Force, so the secrets he was selling could include sensitive defense information.

http://www.akamai.com/html/customers/customer_list.html

If said organisations keep sensitive information in Akamai, then... oh well...

it is the intention that counts. He intended to spy for a foreign government - clearly hostile action toward the US government. For example, if he just posted the info on the open Internet, i think the personal consequences would be much less severe (even though such action could have caused more real damage).

The hilarious "Burn after Reading" clearly comes to mind. I mean there are professionals and amateurs in any business, and intelligence obviously isn't an exception.

Exactly! The Register made the same connection:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/07/akamai_secrets_sting...

This should come as no surprise to anyone who works in the industry.

Keep in mind Akamai was founded by an ex-mossad Sayeret Matkal expert who "coincidently" was seated right next to the terrorists who flew Flight 11 into the WTC.

The US people must demand a new 9/11 investigation.

Would anyone downvoting this care to explain their rationale?

Is it because you doubt the validity of my claims (which are all verifiable by a simple wikipedia search http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_M._Lewin)?

Or is it because I made a tie to 9/11 when discussing an article that mentions a country with 9/11 involvment stealing top secret information from the US Homeland Security department?

Two reasons I downvoted you: First, general consensus and personal common sense (not to mention a fairly large number of applications of Occam's Razor) make listening to suggestions of conspiracy theories about 9/11 tiresome.

Second, to halt the segue from the topic which I found to be interesting, which is Akamai Security and implications of government/foreign agent intrusions into that environment, into some endless ramble about 9/11.

The rationale is that you call Lewin ex-Mossad with no evidence at all, and you allege had a part in 9/11 when the FAA documents actually suggest he tried to fight the hijackers and was stabbed to death.

I don't see him suggesting he was on the hijackers' side.

As to Mossad, considering he was Sayeret Matkal officer it's not that far fetched. It's not that big of a difference anyway.

Actually, I think saying Lewin was "an ex-mossad Sayeret Matkal expert who "coincidently" was seated right next to the terrorists who flew Flight 11 into the WTC" followed by "The US people must demand a new 9/11 investigation" suggests exactly that.

There's a huge difference between being an officer in an elite unit during your army service and being a spy.

spy? now where did anyone suggest that? I think you're trying to guess too much into what other people think. Maybe you should concentrate more on known facts and analyze whether anything interesting can be obtained trough piecing them together.

>"spy? now where did anyone suggest that?"

When OP said Lewin was "ex-mossad"? When you suggested being from Sayeret Matkal is "not that big of a difference" from being in the Mossad?

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