Kim Zetter writes:
The investigation into former national security advisor John Bolton’s handling of classified material stemmed in part from an admission Bolton made to the FBI in July 2021 that hackers – believed to be from Iran – had breached his private AOL email account and tried to extort him over classified information contained in it.
The breach was reported last month by CNN following a law enforcement search of Bolton’s office and home in August. But it was based on a redacted search warrant affidavit in which details around the hacking incident were blacked out and only a header was visible: “Hack of Bolton AOL Account by Foreign Entity.”
The indictment of Bolton released Thursday has now provided details of the breach as well as how Bolton found himself in the position of being extorted after regularly sending what prosecutors say was top-secret information to his wife and daughter via email and encrypted chat. Prosecutors say Bolton did this regularly over the fifteen short months he was in the job – often sending excited messages with multiple exclamation points and 10- to 25-page documents containing information about discussions he had in the White House Situation Room or detailing information he learned in other meetings.
The indictment includes a number of interesting details I haven’t seen reported elsewhere yet, so I thought I’d go over the contents of the indictment here.
Read more on Zero Day.
