Would-Be Akamai Spy Busted By Feds 171
itwbennett writes "Elliot Doxer, an Akamai Technologies staffer, was charged on Wednesday with wire fraud. The case began in June 2006 when Doxer sent an e-mail to the consulate of a foreign country (referred to as 'country X') in which he 'expressed his desire to help that country with whatever information he could obtain in his position,' according to an article on ITworld. 'The foreign consulate that Doxer contacted turned his e-mail over to law enforcement authorities, and a little over a year later, he was contacted by an FBI agent posing as a representative of 'country X.' Over the next 18 months, Doxer left confidential business information such as customer lists and contracts at a designated spot called a dead drop, acts captured via video surveillance.'"
An Analog 'Dead Drop'? (Score:2)
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Not as fun as playing spy.
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If it were China, Russia, Iran or even Japan - they wouldn't pussyfoot around with "Country X". But?
If you needed a better confirmation of the Rick Sanchez allegations, look no further.
Re:An Analog 'Dead Drop'? (Score:4, Funny)
It made him feel more like a secret agent, so they humored him. His handlers did have to tell him not to wear the mask and cape, though. It was creeping out the locals.
Re:An Analog 'Dead Drop'? (Score:5, Informative)
It made him feel more like a secret agent, so they humored him.
It doesn't look like espionage was his goal. From the article:
He also seemed preoccupied with ill will toward his ex-wife, writing at one point that "not enough bad things can happen to her if you know what I mean." And he offered to drop his request for monetary compensation in return for information or pictures of his son.
It sounds like it was more about retribution. His ex-wife apparently disappeared in "Country X" with their son.
Re:An Analog 'Dead Drop'? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I can quite honestly say I would have probably tried something similar, but probably not treason. I know if it was me I would do anything in my capability to get my child back. I wouldn't be quite as stupid about it of course. If its caught so easily its not going to succeed in getting your kid back to begin with.
Its different if its a court battle over custody or something, but once someone crosses the line into actually kidnapping your child, you've gotta do what you've gotta do. Treason definitely isn't
Re:An Analog 'Dead Drop'? (Score:5, Informative)
Treason can (very unlikely) face the death penalty.
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Give it a couple of years, and the companies will have defined theft of IP to give to a foreign entity as treason.
They've already managed to make the government the enforcement arm for what should be civil proceedings. Treason isn't too far away.
Re:An Analog 'Dead Drop'? (Score:4, Informative)
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Let's hope so -- but, as I said, the government is already their enforcement arm, and their entrenching into treaty that every other government will do as well.
The "scope creep" of what is commercial and what is government is a little disturbing.
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Treason is *VERY* far away. Constitutional amendment far.
About the same far away as suspending habeas corpus, which has already been done by Abraham Lincoln, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama?
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Habeas corpus was suspended under G.W. Bush. Obama reinstated it.
A fundamental constitutional right can neither be suspended nor reinstated by an executive order. And the Obama administration is still performing indefinite detention, albeit under different terms than habeas corpus.
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Sorry, my brain decided that Treason actually means Espionage when I was writing that apparently.
Either way it generally gets the feds crawling up your arse though. Which isn't good.
According to the news... (Score:2)
According to the news, he faces 20 years in prison.
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Surely only in the third world and autocratic places like China?
Oh wait, sorry.. forgot....
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I know if it was me I would do anything in my capability to get my child back.
you've gotta do what you've gotta do.
That's pretty well what the other party thinks as well.
Dunno, dude... (Score:3, Insightful)
While I have sympathy for your situation, I see nothing so far except unsuported postulates that his situation is the same.
I don't actually see anywhere the piece of info that his ex-wife actually kidnapped his son or disappeared anywhere. A more common -- and Occam's Razor compliant -- assumption would be that she simply won the custody.
Also note that this wasn't even the payment he originally asked for. He first just asked for $3000, and there was no mention of his son at all. Only when they tried to hagg
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But that's the question, innit? (Score:2)
But that's exactly the question, innit? Is his situation actually all that similar in the first place? Because from everything I can find about it -- and yes, I even spent some time googling, not just TFA -- there is absolutely no mention of any kidnapping being involved or alleged or anything. And again, even his demands and behaviour, don't seem to even remotely resemble any kind of rescue.
What kind of moron (Score:3, Insightful)
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I'm sorry but you're extraordinarily naive about big business if you don't think that some countries, like China - oops - I mean Country X, don't use state resources (people/money/intelligence) to assist their economy illegally. The likely reason that 'Country X' turned this moron in is because they have this information in some other fashion and thought that political capital to be gained from burning this guy was worth it.
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I agree about what he offered, the problem is, dancing with the devil is dangerous. As soon as he'd turned over 'relatively innocent items', they'd immediately be able to pressure him into giving them things they'd really be interested in. Pressure him into doing things he wasn't initially prepared to do, et cetera.
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Exactly. Drag you in, extort you to go deeper and deeper, and then hang you out to dry.
Before involving one's self in espionage, it might make sense to read up on the exploits of James Jesus Angleton and the tradecraft.
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Well, considering how he can probably manage to plug a USB drive into any computers in his office or offices he visits, I'm sure it would be quite simple for them to force him to distribute malware throughout Akamai's corporate headquarters. Then you get to monitor executives with real clout, catch a few of them cheating on their wives or surfing kiddie porn and pressure them into helping you, et cetera, ad nauseum.
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Yup, what kind of moron would do industrial espionage for $3000.00??
My price starts at $3,200,000 deposited into my SwissBank account 438-342-675487-317 Then email me at Splagith457@sogetthis.com the URL of the flikr image you embedded your requirements inside of using basic stenography. encrypt the text with a simple Xor using the HTML source code for the google front page for today.
Re:What kind of moron (Score:5, Informative)
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Heh. The part about the consulate handing the guy over had me convinced he tried to sell something to the Britain, and they only allow US/UK technology exchanges to go one way [slashdot.org].
I suspected as much (Score:2, Insightful)
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another link to a Jewish site with the same claim
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2010/10/07/2741170/jewish-internet-company-employee-arrested-for-selling-secrets [jta.org]
You've really go to be dumb/ignorant to think the US isn't giving the necessary information to Isreal already.
The number of US/Isreali dual nationals in high up US govt. positions is staggering.
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Interesting. Has Israel signed up to international treaties regarding child custody disputes? I suspect not...
Re:What kind of moron (Score:4, Interesting)
China is hardly the only country guilty of this. I've heard more stories from co-workers about issues in France than anywhere else, to the point that it is against company policy to take a company issue laptop there. And I don't mean random guy approaches you in the bar and asks what you do for a living, I mean coming back from dinner to find 3 suits and 2 uniformed cops in your hotel room that all refuse to tell you what they were doing there.
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When travelling back from Israel, custom agents took my laptop from me for an hour, just to check if the battery could be some kind of explosive. Of course, I could not stay around while they checked. I have missed my flight, and had to fly in a crappy El-Al plane.
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They must have read http://xkcd.com/651/
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The example given was the most extreme of the ones I've heard (from people I know and trust). Other examples are similar to yours, with customs running of with equipment for some length of time, security checkpoint people insisting (against policy and the law) to see the contents of classified Currier bags, a suspicious number of laptops that have gone missing, and a suspicious amount of interest in work expressed by strangers (basically my random stranger in a bar scenario above). The reason that France
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Airbus is a subsidiary of the EU governments.
If you have information valuable to Airbus the EU is no place to keep it unencrypted.
If I worked for Boeing I would send all sorts of misinformation into France in unencrypted volumes.
I'd have them spending billions building a new SST that will never be viable.
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There's a fair amount of evidence that Boeing have been obtaining confidential Airbus documents via US Customs and the US government, but I'm not aware of the reverse happening. Which isn't to say that it isn't, of course.
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Honestly have you not paid attention to what has been happening here?
Your laptop needs to be empty, sanitized, clean. put all important stuff on a memory device you can smuggle in on your person or in a different way (memory card in a camera get's past our idiot guards)... Treat coming here like entering North Korea.
Most people have known this for years that entering the United states is identical to entering a fascist dictatorship country.
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Maybe they also felt that they couldn't trust him not to betray their relationship and get egg on everyone's faces.
Also, depending on what country 'X' is, they might have been genuinely affronted by the brazenness in suggesting that they murder his wife. Even people in deeply immoral lines of work often like to think of themselves as being bound by ethics, and will be offended if you treat them as if they have no ethics.
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Yes, in light of his apparently 'lack of mental balance' they figured they'd have a loose cannon on their hands. As a poster replying to my initial post pointed out, it seems very likely that the country in question is Israel. I figured that the people most likely to benefit from this type of information would be China (and I was apparently wrong.)
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I have seen this before first hand:
1: Would be spy working for company "A" calls up someone at company "B" who competes with "A" saying they have some cool secrets.
2: Company "B" notifies company "A" about the would be spy.
3: Would be spy gives the juicy stuff to what he/she thinks is someone who will pay him/her big bucks.
4: ?????
5: No big bucks happen; would be spy ends up with shiny new metal bracelets on wrists and a new domicile.
The problem is this: Even though two companies might be bitter rival
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I think it is important to remember the maxim "Nations do not have friends, they have interests..." ;)
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Serves them right (Score:2)
Israel? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Israel? (Score:4, Informative)
Israel?
Yes: Here's another Source that indicates Israel: http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=190523 [jpost.com]
Re:Israel? (Score:4, Informative)
It seems plausible.
http://www.searchboston.com/boston_directory/Gov/Foreign_Consulates_in_Boston/ [searchboston.com]
Australia - Consulate Boston
Austria - Consulate Boston
Canada - Consulate Boston
Germany - Consulate Boston
Hungary - Consulate Boston
Israel - Consulate Boston
Mexico - Consulate Boston
Norway - Consulate Boston
Portugal - Consulate Boston
Sweden - Consulate Boston
Venezuela - Consulate Boston
Israel would seem the more likely option, and certainly a country to engender the "homeland" feeling.
Looks like "Country X" was Israel (Score:3, Informative)
"I am a Jewish American who lives in Boston," Doxer reportedly wrote in an e-mail to a foreign country's consulate in Boston. "I know you are always looking for information and I am offering the little I may have."
Doxer, who had access to invoices and customer contact information, also said in a later message that his goal was "to help our homeland and our war against our enemies."
He informed the agent that his company served the U.S. Department of Defense, Airbus and several Arab companies. Doxer reportedly asked for $3,000 in compensation for his actions.
Aside from just being a dumbass... (Score:5, Interesting)
(The previous is no more than commentary and opinion and should not be construed as encouragement or advice to commit treason/fraud/etc.)
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You don't contact them initially at all. You just give them some information they can use. Then you contact them with more information, and what you want. HOWEVER, the odds of any country just trusting someone they haven't groomed is pretty weak these days.
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If you think logically about what countries might want such technology, he should have waited at least until he was on a business trip over there and done something(from a don't be a total moron perspective - ethics aside, of course). You have to assume that everything that you say or do in whatever country that you are in is being recorded or filed away somewhere "just in case" there's a future problem. You and I have no secrecy or privacy. If the Government wants information on us for anything at all,
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Actually, I think they burned him because they already have or or more moles in Akamai doing what he offered to do, possibly at rather elevated levels of the company. So they don't need him, don't need the risk exposure of having more moles than they need, and didn't want to take the chance that he was counterintelligence.
Think of it in Reverse (Score:2, Interesting)
Doesn't something seem wrong with the response of the foreigner who informed on him. Wouldn't the proper response be to say something like, "we value transparent relations with the US and wouldn't want to jeopardize them" instead of turning over the man's emails to the US.
Think of this in reverse. Let's say the man worked for Baidu, the Chinese Internet search engine and his loyalty was to the US. The man emails a member of the US government saying, if they wanted help he'd be willing to help them out.
Re:Think of it in Reverse (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, this could easily be a test of loyalty from a friendly nation. You wouldn't want to damage decades of political negotiations over a penny-ante commercial information leak.
Re:Think of it in Reverse (Score:4, Informative)
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Don't forget:
Lee Harvey Oswald.
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Shouldn't the US or anyone else in that situation just say "thanks, but no thanks" instead of starting these cloak and dagger games?
And that pays your salary how?
Paraphrasing Le Carre (Score:2)
This story supports the assertion that more spies are busted through snitching rather than sleuthing
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Maybe he just dropped off a briefcase full of blank paper.
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If I had to guess it's because he never attempted to sell or give up any government information, just information about his (non defense related) job. Why he thought 'Country X' would be interested in such information is beyond me, seems to me like he would have been better off offering the information to a foreign competitor directly, unless his goal was just to screw over the company he worked for as much as possible.
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Why he thought 'Country X' would be interested in such information is beyond me, seems to me like he would have been better off offering the information to a foreign competitor directly, unless his goal was just to screw over the company he worked for as much as possible.
Read the article. He was apparently hoping that 'Country X' would do something bad to his ex-wife, or at least provide him information about their son. I'm guessing that she disappeared into "Country X".
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Probably because he was acting against a private employer and "industrial espionage" isn't the same thing as KGB agents infiltrating the Pentagon. Espionage is what you charge foreigners with with since you can't nail them for treason. Wire fraud is probably closer to what he was actually doing.
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However; as you correctly noted this was just industrial espionage, and not very effective espionage at that.
The crime of espionage requires an attempt to transmit National Defense information to a foreign party with intent, or reason to
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Luckily, we're constantly within the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, and the War on Common Sense. Treason for everybody!
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Because the information he tried to sell wasn't within the scope of the Espionage Act.
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The funny thing is, almost everyone has probably used Akami without realising it. They provide up to 30% of web traffic. I assume most of that comes in the form of updates and software downloads that loads of big players seem to use them for.
Re:for those who wonder what the hell akamai might (Score:5, Informative)
Re:for those who wonder what the hell akamai might (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure I'm getting part of this wrong, because it's been about ten years since I sat through a presentation by an Akamai dude in the waning dot-com days, but their main offering was a sort of content caching/mirroring system with servers all over the place to back it up.
So for example, you're Fox and you sign up to have your streaming TV episodes "Akamaized". The day after a new episode of American Idol is posted to the web, probably a lot of people are downloading/streaming it. Akamai's setup would automatically mirror it out to a bunch of local servers all over the place, so in theory, no matter where you the watcher are, you're streaming from a server a low number of hops/latency from you, and you're not slashdotting Fox's own servers.
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That's just marketing blather. Akami is one of those services that would be called "cloud hosting" if it had been invented more recently. It's just a big web hosting operation what has lots of geographically-dispersed, load-balanced server farms. If you have a heavy-traffic site and you want to make sure it feels fast to your customers, you host it on Akami.
On our network, a large portion of our traffic goes to Akami IP space just from user browsing.
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Are there seriously slashdotters who don't know what akamai is? What is this world coming to?
Re:Entrapment (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, no. If they ask you to commit a crime and you commit the crime, that's not entrapment.
If they induce you to commit a crime you don't want to commit, that's entrapment.
Offering you money isn't enough of an inducement to be entrapment. Offering to let you know where your child is might be. Telling you they'll harm your child if you don't definitely is.
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So please explain to me why a person born under the astrological sign of the zodiac Leo would be more likely to entrap you?
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Re:Entrapment (Score:5, Funny)
"If a LEO approaches me and offers to murder my estranged ex-wife for $20,000 that's entrapment."
No, that's a bargain!
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It could even be construed as justification for self defense if you wound up assaulting the under cover guy.
Some hit man comes in offering bling to kill your wife...maybe you'd think it's just hush money to keep you quiet.
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Again, no, just asking you to do it or offering you some benefit to do it is not entrapment.
Forcing you somehow to do it when you don't want to is entrapment.
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By that logic then the following would also be entrapment:
I threaten to beat-up a co-worker, so I arrive at their house the next day, and on seeing them standing outside of their house, begin whacking them with a plank of wood. The actual victim though was an undercover police officer taking the place of the intended victim, so really the crime could not have been committed had they not been there, but it'd be an incredible stretch to describe that as entrapment.
It's not entrapment for law enforcement agenc
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The assault and battery was intentional, and under the doctrine of transferred intent, your intended target becomes the undercover cop.
There seems to be potential for escalation from a simple misdemeanor assault to a felonious assault on a peace officer.
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I wasn't aware of the transferred intent doctrine. Thanks for the tip.
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Gathering proper evidence, getting proper legal documentation, talking with his employers, and getting several drops to see what information he was willing to give up.
You now, due process and getting solid evidence.
In the real world, you don't go around accusing people and then arrest the one that tries to kill you*, you don't drive a fast sports car until some shoots at you, and you don't other evidence from a magic computer in 22 minutes.
*AKA: The Charlie Angels school of crime fighting.
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I doubt that, most people can't tell the difference between Country X's accent and Chilean (Hispanic) accent [wikipedia.org]
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I laughed my guts at out at Burn After Reading. Watching a smiling Brad Pitt get shot in the face was reason enough to pay the $11.25.
"I guess we learned not to do it again... though I'll be fucked if I know what we did."
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Well, if you happen to be blundering your way in so roughly that the embassy folk are sitting there thinking, "There's no way in hell his own country didn't see him walk in here with a 4' x 6' red flag over his head," then I suppose you're out of luck. It'd be a poor bet to believe that plain-text email sent to a consulate isn't monitored in some way.
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You're going to have to provide a link to that story. I vaguely remember something like it, but Google is awash in results for "boeing airbus contract government leaked" that have nothing to do with such a story.
I'd try Bing, but I don't like how it spies on me.
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You said it man. Every time I hear about a would-be spy trying to sell U.S. Gov't or Corporate secrets to contacts in Israel, I just shake my head. Don't these people realize that Israel is a close ally who wouldn't risk losing our assistance by engaging in espionage against us? Israel has enemies that they are more worried about, their intelligence services are too busy dealing with that to even think about messing with the U.S. -- If you're going to try to sell U.S. secrets, at least sell them to someone
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Are you NUTS? Israel spies on the US like CRAZY. They'd be crazy not to.
Keep Pollard the traitor locked up!