Two sibling contractors convicted a decade ago of hacking into US State Department systems have been charged again, this time for a comically bungled attempt to steal and destroy government documents just minutes after they were fired from their contract jobs.
Ministry of Justice on Thursday said that Muneeb Akhter and Sohaib Akhter, 34, of Alexandria, Virginia, deleted databases and documents that were maintained and owned by three government agencies. The brothers were federal contractors working for an undisclosed Washington, D.C. company that provides software and services to 45 U.S. agencies. Prosecutors said the men coordinated the crimes and began committing them just minutes after they were fired.
Using AI to cover up an alleged crime: what could go wrong?
According to the source, on February 18 at approximately 16:55, the men were fired from the company. indictment printed on Thursday. Within five minutes, they allegedly began attempting to gain access to their employer's system and federal government databases. By that time, access to one of the brothers’ accounts had already been closed. However, another brother allegedly gained access to a government agency database stored on the employer's server and issued commands preventing other users from connecting or making changes to the database. Then, prosecutors say, he ordered the deletion of 96 databases, many of which contained confidential investigative files and records related to Freedom of Information Act issues.
Despite their brazen attempt to steal and destroy information from several government agencies, these men lacked the knowledge of the database commands needed to cover up their alleged crimes. So they allegedly did what many hobbyists do: turned to an artificial intelligence chat tool.
A minute after the Department of Homeland Security information was deleted, Muneep Akhter allegedly asked the artificial intelligence tool, “How do I clear the system logs from the SQL servers after deleting the databases.” Shortly after, he asked the tool a question: “How do you clear all event and application logs from Microsoft Windows Server 2012,” prosecutors said.
The indictment contains enough detail about the destruction of databases and stolen information to indicate that the brothers' attempts to cover their tracks failed. It is unclear whether the apparent glitch occurred because the artificial intelligence tool provided inadequate instructions or whether humans were unable to follow them correctly. Prosecutors say they also obtained recordings of conversations between the men in the hours or days that followed in which they discussed removing incriminating evidence from their homes. Three days later, the men allegedly deleted data from their employer-issued laptops by reinstalling the operating system.
