In the 2017 “Vault 7 leak,” software developer Joshua Schulte from New York provided the information to the investigative organization WikiLeaks.
In the 2017 “Vault 7 leak,” software developer Joshua Schulte from New York provided the information to the investigative organization WikiLeaks.
In a statement released on Thursday, the prosecutors—who had pressed for a life sentence—stated that Schulte had been found guilty of espionage, computer hacking, contempt of court, lying to the FBI, and possessing photos and videos of child sex assault.
Schulte was given a sentence in a New York federal court.
In addition to exposing top-secret hacking capabilities, the Vault 7 leak produced a number of unflattering disclosures regarding the agency’s operations.
In that same year, WikiLeaks made public information about how the CIA compromised the computers and networks of foreign governments, suspected radicals, and other parties in order to monitor them.
According to prosecutors, it was “the largest data breach in the history of the CIA, and his transmission of that stolen information to WikiLeaks is one of the largest unauthorised disclosures of classified information” in the history of the United States.
Thousands of images and films of child sex abuse were discovered in Schulte’s Manhattan apartment, hidden behind three password-protected layers of encryption, by investigators working on the leak case.
In July 2022, he was found guilty on four counts of espionage and computer hacking, one count of lying to FBI investigators, and one count of possessing photographs of child sex abuse.
