Guilty Plea in Senate Data Theft

Jackson Cosko, a former Senate staff member, has pled guilty to five federal crimes: two counts of making public restricted personal information, one count of computer fraud, one count of witness tampering, and one count of obstruction of justice.

According to evidence, federal authorities were alerted to the data theft when the Wikipedia pages of three US senators were edited to include home addresses and personal phone numbers, information that is considered restricted. The information breach is known as "doxxing," defined in the government announcement as " ... the act of gathering, by licit and illicit means, and posting on the Internet personal identifying information (PII) and other sensitive information about an individual."

Cosko who has admitted to being angry about losing his job at a computer administrator's office earlier that year, broke into his former employer's office at least four times and stole information, which was then made public in a possible attempt to influence the senators around the time of a nomination to the US Supreme Court. Cosko was arrested after a witness saw him in the office and confronted him.

Cosko could be sentenced to between 30 and 57 months in prison. Sentencing is scheduled for June 13, 2019.

Read more here.

Join Dark Reading LIVE for two cybersecurity summits at Interop 2019. Learn from the industry's most knowledgeable IT security experts. Check out the Interop agenda here.