Feds Name Suspect in CIA 'Vault 7' Hacking Tool Leak

Former CIA employee Joshua Adam Schulte has been named as a suspect who allegedly may have handed over to WikiLeaks a massive trove of the intelligence agency's cyber espionage tools that the activist group then published online.

The Washington Post reported today that federal prosecutors named Schulte as the suspect in a hearing earlier this year, and that he is now imprisoned in Manhatten for separate and unrelated charges. Schulte worked on a CIA team that built hacking tools to conduct cyber espionage against foreign adversaries, according to the report.

WikiLeaks in March of 2017 began publishing more than 8,700 confidential CIA documents under the title "Vault 7"  that laid bare the intel agency's global hacking arsenal. Among the leaked documents were various zero-day vulnerabilities in Android, iOS, and Windows as well as exploits against network routers, smart TVs, and connected vehicles.

Materials gathered from a search warrant of Schulte's home did not provide sufficient evidence for charges in the Vault 7 case, but he reportedly remains a target in the probe.

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