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Hacker Report: Part 1 Guccifer | Hacked AOL Accounts Of President Bush Family And Other Famous People

Updated on September 11, 2014

By Rachael O'Halloran

Published September 11, 2014

He seemed uncatchable

He evealed their private emails and photos.
He evealed their private emails and photos. | Source

The Elusive Hacker Guccifer

Marcel Lehel Lazar, aka Guccifer - former taxi driver, turned career hacker
Marcel Lehel Lazar, aka Guccifer - former taxi driver, turned career hacker | Source

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Guccifer's Watermark

He included his watermark on all his communications
He included his watermark on all his communications | Source

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February 7, 2013 Hacks

The Smoking Gun was the first media outlet to report about Guccifer's activities on February 7, 2013 regarding both President Bush (Sr. And Jr.) and other Bush family members. RT.com (Russia Today) was just as consistent in their reporting when contacted by him.

The hacker established regular contact via email, sending links to the Google Drive (which he hacked from someone else) where he stored screenshots of the emails, contact lists, and photographs he found in each account as a show of proof of his claims.

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February 7, 2013

According to emails between The Smoking Gun and Guccifer, the hacker contends that:

"The feds” began investigating him a “long time ago,” and that he has hacked “hundreds of accounts.” Asked if he was concerned about an FBI/Secret Service investigation, he replied crytically, “i have an old game with the fucking bastards inside, this is just another chapter in the game.”

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Meet Guccifer, The Hacker

Guccifer is a Romanian cyber-criminal who hacked into the AOL and Facebook accounts of former President George H W Bush and his son former President George W Bush as well as some prominent United States government officials, well known reporters, and Hollywood stars.

The 42-year old Guccifer also goes by the screen names of Guccifer Seven, The Small Fume and Miculfum. His real name is Marcel Lehel Lazar, which has been transposed in print to Marcel Lazar Lehel.

Guccifer's M.O. was the same each time. He took what information he found in each account, then emailed tidbits to certain media sites, published it on the websites of his victims, their Facebook walls, and a Google Drive (also hacked) exposing the owners for what he believed were illicit affairs, family secrets, government impropriety and in later communications, for being part of the Illuminati.

Noting the contact lists and address books, he then hacked into those accounts to acquire more contacts, "dirt" and photos.

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So how did he hack into all of these accounts? Weak passwords?

Yes, that, but mostly ... by guessing the answers to each person's security questions (because they answered them truthfully!). He was able to access accounts at Facebook, Comcast, AOL, Earthlink, Verizon, Cox, Yahoo, Flickr, Gmail,and the British-based Btinternet - among others.

Guccifer also used multiple lists of the most popular names for dogs and cats. He did some homework with the Wikipedia pages of his targets to reveal important life events and the names of relatives so he could hack their accounts too.

  • I can't stress to you enough - LIE on the security questions. The websites do NOT need to know if you are telling the truth!
  • Security questions are only to verify your identity with whatever answer you tell them. The answers must match exactly in wording, not necessarily in funky lettering, so throw in an extra word or number in your answers.
  • If you say your favorite color is magenta, and it is not, trust me - the websites don't care.
  • If someone tries to illegally access your account, if they don't have the exact answer as you wrote it, they don't get in!

Answer all questions with a LIE! Then write them down in that Dollar Store notebook I keep mentioning in all my articles! Don't store them in a file on your computer or your email account.

After hacking accounts, Guccifer went on to masquerade as those account owners to send emails to media, to the alphabet government agencies he taunted with random contact, and posted comments, status updates and more photos on Facebook walls and the Google Drive.

This article may look like a lot of hacked accounts, and it is, but believe me when I tell you that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Part Two of this article has a detailed chart of his successful hacks and the conclusion of this story.

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Former Presidents George W Bush (Jr) and George H W Bush (Sr)

Father and Son
Father and Son | Source

Hacked Emails From Former President George H W Bush (I'm sure they changed all the info by now...at least I hope they did)

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Former President George H W Bush (Sr)

George Bush Sr in hospital. His health became critical so that the family started considering a eulogy for his funeral.
George Bush Sr in hospital. His health became critical so that the family started considering a eulogy for his funeral. | Source

How's The Account Security At America Online (AOL)?

Up to December 2013, Guccifer's hacks included some Rockefeller family members, former FBI agents, former Secret Service agents, a US Senator and almost all of the accounts were AOL email accounts.

Since the majority of accounts that Guccifer hacked were AOL accounts, what does that say about the security at AOL?

More importantly, what does it say about people's passwords and security questions?

I think what it says is that passwords and security questions were not strong enough since they were definitely hackable. If you want to know if your password is secure, see my article on how to create the best passwords that even a hacker would hate.

Former Presidents George H. W. Bush And George W. Bush

Using proxy servers in Russia and other countries to hide his own IP address, Guccifer obtained emails dated from 2009 to 2012 from the AOL account of former President George H W Bush (Sr).

  • Why do U.S. Presidents have AOL accounts under their own names? They're begging to be hacked!

Guccifer uploaded all his findings onto the Google Drive, then put links on Facebook walls and sent more out by email to everyone on Sr's and Jr 's contact list.

Bush Sr's emails revealed confidential chats between him and many government and military dignitaries, and personal messages with friends and family members. The most confidential stuff on the personal side was the home addresses and a list of cell phone numbers of Bush family members. (see photos in sidebar)

In particular, when Guccifer hacked daughter Dorothy Bush's AOL account, there were photos taken of former President Bush Sr in his hospital bed with emails between the siblings discussing their father's ill health. The emails revealed that the family was preparing for the worse - funeral arrangements for Bush Sr.

When Guccifer hacked George W Bush (Jr) emails, it revealed messages he sent to his siblings on December 26 saying he was “thinking about the eulogy” and, mentioned that since they didn't want "bubba" to be a speaker (their name for former President Bill Clinton), he wanted their stories to help him compose it.

From their address books, it was a cakewalk through the rest of the Bush family contacts. The AOL account of Dorothy Bush, sister to Bush Jr, had a lot of private family photos which Guccifer shared with the media to show he had accessed the account.

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Dorothy Bush was unaware her AOL account had been hacked until the private family photographs were published. The account had photos of Bush Sr and Bill Clinton at the Bush home in Maine, son Jeb Bush, of Ralph Lauren and his son, who is married to Neil Bush's daughter Lauren (so I guess her name Lauren Lauren now?), and pictures of mother Barbara and wife Laura Bush.

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Guccifer missed out hacking into the specific private domains Bush Sr and Bush Jr set up for their post-presidential offices. The official word is that no national secrets were breached.

The US Government lies about so many things that I wonder if they would even tell the public the truth if national secrets had been breached.

Since 2013, attempts to discover who the hacker was always seemed to be in vain because, with each new hack, Guccifer used fake IP addresses in Russia, Romania and other countries, and "burner" email accounts (use them for as long as you need them, then delete or abandon them), and certain ghost software to make him appear anonymous and untraceable.

He taunted his prey regarding his whereabouts, that he lived overseas, which was not believed due to his overuse of different proxy servers to lead them astray.

This hacker wanted his exploits to be publicized so he stayed in regular contact with the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, The Smoking Gun. RT.com and with some of his victims.

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Guccifer hacked the accounts of two former Presidents. Any crime against any President is a capital crime.

Do you think the United States will accuse him of a capital crime?

See results

Colin Powell and Corina Cretu

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The rumor about an affair between Powell & Cretu was started by the hacker and was fueled by photographs like this one taken at a government social.Corina Cretu in 2013
The rumor about an affair between Powell & Cretu was started by the hacker and was fueled by photographs like this one taken at a government social.
The rumor about an affair between Powell & Cretu was started by the hacker and was fueled by photographs like this one taken at a government social. | Source
Corina Cretu in 2013
Corina Cretu in 2013 | Source

Colin Powell's Hacked Facebook Page

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screenshot of Colin Powell's  Hacked Facebook pageGuccifer writing as Colin Powell on his Facebook page
screenshot of Colin Powell's  Hacked Facebook page
screenshot of Colin Powell's Hacked Facebook page | Source
Guccifer writing as Colin Powell on his Facebook page
Guccifer writing as Colin Powell on his Facebook page | Source

The Hacking Of Former Secretary Of State Colin Powell

One hacking debacle in March 2013 got so out of hand with embarrassing publicity when Guccifer hacked the Facebook account of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, that Powell ended up making a public statement of denial several months later.

On Powell's Facebook account, the hacker found photographs of Powell, a man married for over 50 years, with pretty 42-year old Ms. Corina Cretu, a Romanian who was a former senator and Presidential adviser in the Romanian government. Guccifer assumed it was an affair and set out to post about it. Everywhere!

Guccifer hacked Cretu's account for more dirt on Powell and there he found a treasure trove of emails to Powell expressing love for each other. There were family photographs, some of which included Powell, as well as other photos of the couple taken at government social events and meetings. There were many emails sent back and forth between them over a ten year period.

It was all the ammunition Guccifer needed. He took screenshots of it all - the private emails and the photographs - and started a smear campaign against Powell and Cretu.

However, emailing it all to certain media and newspaper websites wasn't enough for him.

In order to discredit Powell and Cretu further, he hacked into the Facebook account of one of Powell's friends - 4-star Air Force General Merrill McPeak - and proceeded to impersonate McPeak.

Guccifer posted on McPeak's Facebook wall comments and status updates which included a link to the Google Drive where Guccifer had uploaded screenshots of Powell's photographs to fuel the "affair" rumors as truth.

As McPeak, he then commented on Colin Powell's Facebook wall something to the effect that he (McPeak) was aware that Powell had had an affair with Cretu during his 4 years as Secretary of State and for up to 6 years thereafter. Guccifer's teaser comments with link got a lot of attention in a very short period of time.

Several of McPeak's friends clicked "like" on his comments, totally unaware that it was not McPeak doing the posting.

The story of Powell's "affair" was picked up by the media and rag mags and circulated for several months. By August 2013, Powell was forced to make a statement to deny an affair, but the damage to his reputation had already been done.

Guccifer, the hacker, went on his merry way, leaving Powell to deal with the fray, while he continued to hack through to January 2014. But he wasn't done with Powell yet. They would cross paths one more time.

Could all the prior hacking possibly be a cover-up to hide Guccifer's real target?

Maybe Guccifer only wanted to get into the email accounts of one or two people in particular and buried his real target in the masses of other hacks.

Could one of those people possibly have been Hillary Clinton to see what her private emails said about the handling of Benghazi, or maybe her plans to run for President in 2016?

Hillary Clinton, Testifying In Congress ‘Algerian terrorists got weapons from Libya’

"What difference does it make when we knew?"  Clinton testifies: ‘Algerian terrorists got weapons from Libya, nowhere else.’
"What difference does it make when we knew?" Clinton testifies: ‘Algerian terrorists got weapons from Libya, nowhere else.’ | Source

Former Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton

No, he didn't get into Hillary Clinton's email accounts and since he didn't, the next best place to hack would be one of her assistants or confidantes'.

So in March 2013, he hacked the AOL account of Sidney Blumenthal, long time friend to both the Clintons, former White House aide to former President Bill Clinton and now special adviser to Hillary Clinton.

What does he advise her on? If these emails are any clue, he has the dirt behind the scenes in Benghazi.

Sidney Blumenthal's emails revealing some sensitive information that Guccifer felt compelled to share with several media outlets.

This time, instead of taking screenshots of the emails - as was his practice in the past - Guccifer retyped the multi-page email memos in Comic Sans font onto pink backgrounds (in order to obscure his location) and sent them to RT.com, aka Russian Today, as well as The Smoking Gun.

The memos were on the topics of Benghazi, Libya and the January 2013 hostage crisis in Algeria.

Who knows if the wording has been changed in the retyping or skewed a certain way not in the originals? The memos are inflammatory toward Clinton - whether Guccifer changed the wording in them or not, because of the nature of the information.

One memo alleges that the Saudis funded Benghazi and some media websites say the fore-knowledge of this is the reason why President Obama, Leon Panetta andHillary Clinton lied to the public about not intervening in the seven hours of attacks at Beghazi on September 11th of 2012.

The email memo dated February 16, 2013 reports that it has "intelligence from extremely sensitive sources and should be handled with care.”

Why would you put this in an unsecured email if it was sensitive intelligence?

Hillary Clinton's knowledge and subsequent statements of the Benghazi attack was hotly disputed when the US Intelligence Agency made public announcements to the contrary. She appeared before Congress to be questioned lengthily on her knowledge of the events before, during and after the crisis that left four Americans dead.

She claims she didn't speak to Obama or Panetta, and Panetta swears he spoke to no one either. Obama was curiously out of reach for the seven hours of the crisis.

It was evident that they wanted the American people to think that no one was in communication with each other at a time when the country was in crisis. No one was running the country, I guess.

So, what did the top US government officials know about Benghazi and when exactly did they know it? Here is the timeline of Benghazi to reference while reading the Blumenthal/Clinton emails.

Just the fact that these emails from Blumenthal even exist, they don't put Clinton (or Panetta or Obama) in a favorable light ... which, I suspect, was exactly the intention behind exposing them.

(Click thumbnail pix to view) Email To Hillary Clinton - September 12, 2012 - last page missing - copied by Guccifer onto pink background

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Email To Hillary Clinton - October 6, 2012 - complete- copied by Guccifer onto pink background

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Confidential?

If something were this confidential, why wasn't this hand delivered by messenger or reported face to face?

How Secure Are Confidential Emails?

Do you think information deemed to be confidential should be sent via email?

See results

Email To Hillary Clinton - December 10, 2012 - complete- copied by Guccifer onto pink background

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(200,000 lives lost) Email To Hillary Clinton - February 16, 2013 - complete- copied by Guccifer onto pink paper

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200,000 lives lost
200,000 lives lost

Jeffrey Tambor, from the Arrested Development (TV Series)

Email accounts of Tambor and his wife were both hacked so Guccifer could use the accounts to send email blasts to leak documents he got from Hilary Clinton's emails.
Email accounts of Tambor and his wife were both hacked so Guccifer could use the accounts to send email blasts to leak documents he got from Hilary Clinton's emails. | Source

Actor Jeffrey Tambor and Wife Kasia

In March 2013, Guccifer decided to hack the email of Hollywood actor, Jeffrey Tambor and his wife Kasia. Even though he was using proxy servers to hide his location, he posed as Jeffrey Tambor to muddy up the investigative trail of his location. From Tambor's account, he sent the content of the emails he found on the account of Joseph Reed, the under-secretary general at the UN and the Blumenthal/Clinton emails to everyone on both Reed's and Blumenthal's contact lists.

Since some of the emails mention certain Russian officials, Guccifer also sent a separate e-mail to about two dozen Russian reporters at The Moscow Times, The St. Petersburg Times, and Pravda.

The reason Guccifer had hacked the AOL account of Tambor's wife, Kasia, was so he could use it to send email blasts showing the tense situations in Libya via screenshots of emails from Blumenthal and Clinton to reporters and news media websites, like The Smoking Gun and RT.com who reported extensively on his exploits.

Before sending any of his hacked discoveries, Guccifer always watermarked in purple his hacker name or initial on his screenshots to prove he was the responsible party for the hack.

In their contact names on their AOL accounts, Tambor and his wife had the names, email addresses and phone numbers of the cast of Jeffrey Tambor's TV show "Arrested Development," the writing staff and the show's producers, Ron Howard (Richie from Happy Days), Brian Grazer and other producers, and various media personalities and websites used to make show announcements.

Guccifer copied both contact lists to keep for future reference in order to continue his exploits, as you'll see from the names of Hollywood stars who were also hacked.

Blumenthal was eventually able to reset his AOL password and regain control of his email account, but not before the emails sent to Hillary Clinton about Benghazi were circulated on several continents.

Mariel Hemingway

AOL account hacked - passwords to her web site & Facebook page which Guccifer defaced as he had done with Colin Powell's Facebook page.
AOL account hacked - passwords to her web site & Facebook page which Guccifer defaced as he had done with Colin Powell's Facebook page. | Source

Nicole Kidman

Kidman's private email address was exposed on media sites
Kidman's private email address was exposed on media sites | Source

Celebrities Hacked

Gaining access to so many contact lists (address books) was bound to turn up some celebrities. Guccifer hacked the Yahoo account of Tina Brown, then editor of the Daily Beast website, and acquired over 900 names and email addresses from her address book. Guccifer put them on an Excel spreadsheet and chose his targets at random.

Their cellphone numbers, private email addresses, and home addresses were all fair game.

The list is long but here are some of the notables:

  • comedian Steve Martin
  • author Kitty Kelley
  • actress Mariel Hemingway
  • actor Robert Redford
  • actor Warren Beatty
  • actress Nicole Kidman
  • actor Leonardo DiCaprio

From actor/writer Julian Fellowes’s Btinternet account, Guccifer also acquired the script for the 4th season finale of “Downton Abbey” and exposed it 6 months before the episode aired in England.


John Doerr, Google & Amazon Board exec

 Doerr is on US President Barack’s Obama Economic Recovery Advisory Board
Doerr is on US President Barack’s Obama Economic Recovery Advisory Board | Source

John Doerr, On Economic Recovery Advisory Board

John Doerr is #527 on the list of the richest people in the world. In addition to sitting on several Boards of Directors, he was appointed in 2009 by President Obama to the Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Guccifer hacked Doerr's AOL account and while posing as Doerr, he sent two emails to The Smoking Gun website to get credit that he had possession of the account. The excerpts:

“do you like my new face?”

“i wear glasses right now an I have 2 zillion + in my bank accounts.”

There was nothing of any merit in the accounts, so the hack resulted only in bragging rights.

More Political Hacks

  • Yahoo account of George-Cristian Maior, head of the Romanian Intelligence Service
  • Earthlink account of ex-Nixon aide, John Dean
  • Comcast account of former Secretary of the Air Force, George Roche
  • Comcast account of John Negroponte, US Ambassador to the UN and to Honduras. Guccifer changed his password to "hondbabykill1" to protest what he said was American support of the killing and torturing of dissidents there.
  • Sky Drive account of Patricia Scotland, former UK Attorney General
  • Comcast account of Laura Manning Johnson, Dept of Homeland Security officer and former CIA analyst.
  • an unnamed an ex-FBI agent and wife who kept Word files with all their passwords and PIN numbers giving access to their accounts on Ebay, Facebook, Sprint, Netflix, Dropbox, Skype, credit cards, banking, insurance, retirement accounts.

Don't keep a Word document (or any file) on your computer or in your email files with your PIN numbers and passwords to the rest of your online life.

Random public comments from news media sites

"If Guccifer was that good at hacking, they should have offered him a job!"

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"He went undetected for well over a year, which doesn't say too much for our National Security Agency (NSA) who is supposed to protect us against cyber-crime invasions."

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"This hacker was not so much malicious in that he planted viruses or malware, as much as he was out to embarrass the people he hacked. He found information that the public might want to know about and he exposed it - with pictures and other proof. He did us a favor. He convinced us of what we know to be true about our elected officials."

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David Rockefeller's Ex-Wife - Comcast & GMail Hacked

Guccifer, in frequent contact with The Smoking Gun and RT.com websites, forwarded evidence that he had hacked the Comcast and Gmail accounts of Diana Newell Rowan, the ex-wife of David Rockefeller, Jr. as well as the spokesman for the Rockefeller family. Just the announcement was made; the evidence was not published on either website.

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Also hacked were two adult children of the late Lawrence Rockefeller and a former Secret Service Agent, Dennis Dwyer, who is in charge of the Rockefeller family's security.

Met Life CEO Is Another Victim

Guccifer hacked the Comcast account of Steven Kandarian, CEO of Met Life Insurance Company, taking his phone logs, personal financial records, divorce records and of course, his contact list.

Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski - Email Hacked

Guccifer hacked Republican U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski's Yahoo e-mail account in late 2013, but the results were disappointing, I'm sure.

Her rather empty Yahoo account was connected to her Flickr account and Guccifer took screenshots to show that he was signed in as the Senator on both accounts. It seems the Yahoo account was created over five years ago in order to open the Flickr account, but her staff says she never used the Yahoo account for email correspondence. He sent a screenshot showing "Hi, Lisa" to show he was in possession of the account.

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U.N. Under-Secretary General Joseph Verner Reed

United Nations Under-Secretary-General Joseph Verner Reed is a special adviser to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Previously Reed was a former ambassador to Morocco during the Reagan Administration.

His connection to Bush is that he was the White House Chief of Protocol for George H.W. Bush Sr. and made it into his address book. So, his AOL account was hacked, accessing his email, contact list, financial and travel records.

Through Reed's contact list, the trail led the hacker to the Rockefeller family because Reed served as David Rockefeller’s personal assistant for the 20 years he worked at Chase Manhattan Bank.

In an e-mail to media, the hacker bragged that he had gained access to the e-mail accounts of Happy Rockefeller, widow of former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, and other Rockefeller family members.

Reed's emails were held in reserve for a future date, to be a companion to the hacked Hillary Clinton emails sent by her adviser, Sidney Blumenthal about her knowledge of Benghazi, and the Algerian crisis.

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David Greenberg Hacked, Has Top Secret Security Clearance

David Greenberg, is an intelligence analyst for Lockheed Martin. His Yahoo account was hacked in late 2013. Greenberg has been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and has been part of the Department of Defense’s Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization.

A peek inside Greenberg's email box shows the Top Secret daily "threat update" which is issued every day by the Baghdad Embassy Security Force (BESF). No screenshot available.

Mark Gatanas, Defense Contractor

Mark Gatanas is a Virginia defense contractor with Top Secret security clearance and the founder of VizorNet, whose claim to fame is that they manufacture CryptSec, a computer security product that is supposed to protect against computer crimes.

How ironic is it that Guccifer hacked his email account! However, he didn't get much from the account. The Smoking Gun says he took screenshots to show he had accessed one folder. No description was given, so it must have been of no consequence.

Bernstein

Carl Bernstein, Journalist who broke the Watergate case in the Nixon Administration
Carl Bernstein, Journalist who broke the Watergate case in the Nixon Administration | Source

Journalist Carl Bernstein of Watergate Fame

Guccifer hacked journalist Carl Bernstein's Verizon account and checked out his emails, bank and stock balances.

To mark his territory, he made screenshots of it all and sent them to various news outlets saying he hacked Bernstein because “he is around these days. he is jew. But he fights the illuminati!”

The tone of the message is in keeping with prior messages regarding Illuminati conspiracies, the Rockefellers, and some government officials.

Candace Bushnell

Author of Sex and the City
Author of Sex and the City | Source

Sex And The City Author Hacked

Candace Bushnell got hacked and 50 pages of the draft of her new book were put up on Google Drive for all to read.

Susan Malone, Former FBI Agent

Her account gave contacts to more FBI agents, past and present.
Her account gave contacts to more FBI agents, past and present. | Source

Several FBI Agents Hacked

Susan Malone, a former FBI agent and one of the first two women sworn in as special agents in 1972, is an Army supervisor stationed in Afghanistan and assigned to the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System. She has a Top Secret security clearance and Guccifer hacked her Yahoo email account, re-sorted her mail to show only the ones that had attachments and things marked "For Official Use Only."

From her account, the address book yielded two ex-FBI agents with Comcast accounts which Guccifer hacked but they claim the hacker didn't get to see anything of consequence. (Would they really say so if he did?)

Neile Miller

National Nuclear Security Adminstrator
National Nuclear Security Adminstrator | Source

Head Of Nuclear Security Administration Hacked

Neile Miller heads the National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency that maintains the country's stockpile of nuclear weapons. Her Facebook account and a personal email account were hacked by Guccifer in June 2013.

She has Top Secret security clearance and part of her nuclear-related duties involves managing and securing the nation’s nuclear weapons and keeping weapons of mass destruction from falling into the hands of "state and non-state actors.”

She oversees a $12 billion annual budget, 2500 employees, and 35,000 other contract workers.

The Smoking Gun reports that the hacker didn't access any confidential or sensitive material from Miller’s accounts to their knowledge. He did take photos of Obama and Miller at a White House meeting in 2012.

Miller, who left her position with the NNSA in June 2013, issued a statement that these were personal accounts that did not contain any classified information.

Several other Obama Administration officials were also hacked, which are listed in a chart on Part Two of this article.

Guccifer was not worried about getting caught, sending this email to The Smoking Gun: “My end is far. Remember this is another chapter of the game.”

Chief of Staff to Former President Reagan

While Guccifer was hacking Colin Powell, he made copies of emails between Powell and Kenneth Duberstein, who was the Chief of Staff for Ronald Reagan and who now is a board member of Boeing and Conoco Phillips.

Guccifer hacked Duberstein's AOL account in March 2013, with proof shown by a screenshot of Duberstein’s health insurance card.

Colin Powell, Former Secretary of State

Source

More Taunting of Colin Powell

In April 2013, Guccifer hacked the AOL account of a public relations executive and copied his contact list.

From nosing around the account, he was able to guess the security answers to identity verification questions of several other potential accounts to hack. Among them was the Hotmail account of Marilyn Berns, sister to Colin Powell.

He sent an email to Powell's new Gmail account using Berns' Hotmail account. The subject line: "My dear brother."

The message: "Have a look tell me what you think? Take your time.”

He attached six screenshots of former CIA official Tyler Drumheller's email account telling about how Powell and others in the Bush administration botched claims about the threat from Saddam Hussein’s purported weapons of mass destruction.

He bragged in his daily email to The Smoking Gun that he sent an email “to Colin P. from sister account…therefore enhancing the general’s attention.”

Guccifer signed off his email saying: “And last but not least i have a word for the Main Stream Zionist Media: you will fall like a house of cards!”

Why Is A Romanian Hacker Interested In Former Presidents, Celebrities And Former Government Officials?

With this hacker being so accessible and making regular contact, why couldn't they catch him sooner?

The more I really looked at the people he hacked, I became curious why a Romanian hacker would be interested in two former Presidents of the United States, past and present government officials, Presidential hopefuls, movie stars, and journalists.

I guess after not finding anything in the AOL Bush accounts that was untoward or malicious to spread as another "Watergate," he let it fizzle out by hacking others to spread pictures, rumors, and emails with private cell phone numbers.

There seems to be no point as to why this hacker would go to all this trouble and risk imprisonment, unless prisons in foreign countries have stepped up their comfort levels.

Was Guccifer working for someone else - maybe even someone in the US government, like the NSA (National Security Agency) - looking for dirt on various government officials?

For whose benefit did he do the hacking? He certainly didn't gain anything from all his activities.

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Did Guccifer Have An Employer?

Do you think Guccifer was working for a government agency, or just having his fun?

See results

Commentary

1. The fact that this guy was able to get away with hacking such prominent dignitaries and personalities from December 2012 until January 2014 and was in pretty constant communication is a true testament to their abilities to track a hacker.

2. I think the US government needs to hire more hackers to work for them - reformed or still in rehabilitation, it doesn't matter. Anyone is better than who they have right now.

3. This incident shows that we - no matter "who" we are - no longer have an expectation of privacy with our "private" email accounts.

4. This hacker proved it was very easy to hack AOL and Facebook accounts and go undetected. The majority of people who were hacked had no idea they had been hacked.

5. At this point, I say to anyone with an AOL account or a Facebook account who thinks they might have been hacked, they probably were. In 2012, my Facebook account was hacked and that is why I no longer have a Facebook account. Nor will I ever have one in the future.

6. I hope this has made you rethink your security questions and answers. Check out the links in the sidebar for hints on how to make your security questions and passwords more secure.

Your comments are appreciated. Thanks for reading.

Conclusion of this article

There is a Part Two. Click the link.

Click to read the conclusion of this article.

Do Not Copy

Link but don't copy
Link but don't copy

© Rachael O'Halloran, September 2014

© 2014 Rachael O'Halloran

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