(New York) A former CIA computer scientist was sentenced Thursday to 40 years in prison for having transmitted cyber espionage tools to the WikiLeaks site in 2017, “the most serious data leak” in the history of the American security agency. intelligence, according to the prosecution.
Joshua Schulte, 35, was convicted in July 2022 of eight counts of espionage. He was also convicted in September 2023 of possessing child pornography, with a large collection of child pornography videos discovered on his computers during a search of his home.
“Joshua Schulte betrayed his country by committing one of the most brazen acts of espionage in American history,” New York federal prosecutor Damian Williams commented in a statement on Thursday.
“Mr Schulte seriously harmed the national security of the United States and directly endangered the lives of CIA employees, persisting in his attitude even after his arrest” in 2017, said the Deputy Minister of Justice in charge of the National Security division, Matthew Olsen, cited in the text.
In 2016, while working for an elite cyberespionage unit, he began amassing the “Vault 7” collection of hacking tools, malware and computer viruses.
WikiLeaks began publishing the 8,761 documents in March 2017, greatly embarrassing the agency and providing professional and amateur hackers around the world with the same tools as U.S. intelligence agents.
“The source wishes to initiate a public debate on the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons,” WikiLeaks said at the time.
But the prosecution claims that Joshua Schulte’s motivation was to take revenge on the CIA, whose management he criticized for not having taken his side in internal conflicts.