Akamai Employee Arrested and Accused of Being a Spy

http://www.securityweek.com/akamai-employee-arrested-accused-trying-sell-information-foreign-government

by privacyguru • 16 years ago

50 29 16 years ago

You gotta love how the foreign country is specifically unnamed -- another news report says it was referred to as Country X, but "It is alleged that in later communications, Doxer said his chief desire “was to help our homeland and our war against our enemies.”" Doxer is Jewish.

chopsueyar• 16 years ago

Here is a bit more detail:

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2010/10/07/2741170/jewish-in...

cullenking• 16 years ago

So we can probably assume he was attempting to help Israel, the country we are fiscally and militarily tied to already. Kinda funny - I wonder if he has some sort of mental illness if he didn't already realize this.

tptacek• 16 years ago

There is allegedly a huge amount of espionage directed at the US from Israel. You wouldn't have to be mentally ill to be involved in it.

metamemetics• 16 years ago

Israel's first nuclear bombs were believed (by the CIA) to be constructed from highly enriched uranium stolen from the US Navy nuclear fuel plant operated by the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation. So it wouldn't be completely unprecedented.

kujawa2• 16 years ago

Wait, so this idiot was trying to sell information to the Israeli government from Akamai?

There is no information that Israel could possibly want that Akamai wouldn't be more than happy to simply hand over, I'm fairly certain. Given how many people who work at that company are Israeli citizens ...

borski3• 16 years ago

That's not necessarily true. There are, I'm guessing, plenty of contracts Akamai has with the U.S. government for content delivery (the military comes to mind) that are not public knowledge and probably require some level of security clearance.

Of course, I'm just guessing here, but would you really be surprised if this were true?

kujawa2• 16 years ago

I suppose things could have changed since I left, but they weren't really rigged for that sort of thing when I was there, and I was in two groups who would have been very close to that sort of thing.

borski3• 16 years ago

Firstly, it's a bit ridiculous that such lengths are taken to "anonymize" the country's name. Turns out it's not that hard to speculate, especially given the JTA article posted above.

What I'm really curious about is whether Country X approached the US with this information in an attempt to gain good "karma," or if the US approached Country X with an active investigation and they responded in a manner of "Oh, yeah...meant to tell you about that! Sorry!"

sethg• 16 years ago

...or someone in Country X’s embassy decided that this guy was more likely to be a nut or an agent provocateur than someone in a position to offer really useful intelligence, and therefore there was no downside to turning the fellow in to the FBI.

He should have gone to the Russians. I hear their spying-on-America department is a little understaffed these days.

danielnicollet2• 16 years ago

The Jewish / Israeli connection is not made in the article. Why? I don't understand how this idiotic behavior was supposed to help the US anyway as Doxer said in http://www.jta.org/news/article/2010/10/07/2741170/jewish-in...

patrickgzill• 16 years ago

I think that the "homeland" that Doxer was referring to is Israel, not the USA.

My prediction is that unfortunately many other Jews will now be under suspicion of being disloyal if they handle sensitive information.

danielnicollet2• 16 years ago

I agree with you. However, there comes a time when you need to choose the "homeland" you pledge allegiance to. If you don't want to make that choice and stand by it, I can understand people would become suspicious in such situations. I m a dual citizen and I of course love the US and France (where I grew up) but if the two fell on different sides of any issue, I would at least stay 100% loyal to the US because I chose to make this my home and americans welcomed me warmly. If I felt differently, I would move back to France. Maybe that guy should have done so with Israel...

webmonkeyuk• 16 years ago

<< If convicted, Doxer faces a maximum penalty of 20 years’ imprisonment, a three-year term of supervised release, a $250,000 fine or twice the gain or loss, whichever is highest, and restitution to the victim >>

The guys's clearly done something bad but that seems a bit excessive.

jrockway• 16 years ago

Stealing company secrets: termination.

Stealing company secrets because an FBI agent asks you to: 20 years in prison.

I am beginning to understand the whole "don't talk to the cops" movement.

smallblacksun• 16 years ago

Selling secrets to a foreign government is a very serious crime. Also, note that Akamai customers include NASA, Boeing, and the US Air Force, so the secrets he was selling could include sensitive defense information.

http://www.akamai.com/html/customers/customer_list.html

borism3• 16 years ago

If said organisations keep sensitive information in Akamai, then... oh well...

VladRussian2• 16 years ago

it is the intention that counts. He intended to spy for a foreign government - clearly hostile action toward the US government. For example, if he just posted the info on the open Internet, i think the personal consequences would be much less severe (even though such action could have caused more real damage).

ihavenomouth2• 16 years ago

This should come as no surprise to anyone who works in the industry.

Keep in mind Akamai was founded by an ex-mossad Sayeret Matkal expert who "coincidently" was seated right next to the terrorists who flew Flight 11 into the WTC.

The US people must demand a new 9/11 investigation.

ihavenomouth2• 16 years ago

Would anyone downvoting this care to explain their rationale?

Is it because you doubt the validity of my claims (which are all verifiable by a simple wikipedia search http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_M._Lewin)?

Or is it because I made a tie to 9/11 when discussing an article that mentions a country with 9/11 involvment stealing top secret information from the US Homeland Security department?

ghshephard• 16 years ago

Two reasons I downvoted you: First, general consensus and personal common sense (not to mention a fairly large number of applications of Occam's Razor) make listening to suggestions of conspiracy theories about 9/11 tiresome.

Second, to halt the segue from the topic which I found to be interesting, which is Akamai Security and implications of government/foreign agent intrusions into that environment, into some endless ramble about 9/11.

nir3• 16 years ago

The rationale is that you call Lewin ex-Mossad with no evidence at all, and you allege had a part in 9/11 when the FAA documents actually suggest he tried to fight the hijackers and was stabbed to death.

VladRussian2• 16 years ago

The hilarious "Burn after Reading" clearly comes to mind. I mean there are professionals and amateurs in any business, and intelligence obviously isn't an exception.

saetaes• 16 years ago

Exactly! The Register made the same connection:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/07/akamai_secrets_sting...

Akamai Employee Arrested and Accused of Being a Spy

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