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A24 TECHNOLOGY
Monday 8 July 2019
Mystery of NSA leak lingers as stolen document case winds up

By TAMI ABDOLLAH and the Moscow-based cyber-
ERIC TUCKER security firm Kaspersky Lab,
Associated Press which in turn notified the
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fed- U.S. Kaspersky declined to
eral agents descended discuss the Martin case.
on the suburban Maryland The roughly 20 officers who
house with the flash and stormed Martin’s home did
bang of a stun grenade, so with dramatic force, ar-
blocked off the street and riving with a battering ram
spent hours questioning the and a “flash bang” device
homeowner about a theft meant to cause temporary
of government documents disorientation. State troop-
that prosecutors would lat- ers shut down the road as
er describe as “breathtak- agents interrogated Martin
ing” in its scale. for four hours.
The suspect, Harold Martin, Martin was never charged
was a contractor for the with disclosing informa-
National Security Agency. tion and was accused
His arrest followed news of only of unlawfully retaining
a devastating disclosure defense information. The
of government hacking Shadow Brokers, which two
tools by a mysterious inter- weeks before Martin’s ar-
net group calling itself the In this June 6, 2013 file photo, the sign outside the National Security Administration (NSA) campus rest surfaced on Twitter with
Shadow Brokers . It seemed in Fort Meade, Md. the warning that it would
to some that the United Associated Press auction off NSA hacking
States might have found some of the NSA’s closely time of his arrest. at a 2016 detention hear- tools online, continued
another Edward Snowden, guarded hacking tools. Prosecutors allege Martin ing. “It became a compul- trickling out disclosures af-
who also had been a con- Yet authorities have never jeopardized national secu- sion. ter Martin was in custody,
tractor for the agency. publicly linked Martin or rity by bringing home reams “This was not Spycraft be- a seeming indication that
“You’re a bad man. There’s anyone else to the Shadow of classified information havior,” he added. “This is someone else may have
no way around that,” one Brokers and the U.S. has even as, they say, he once not how a Russian spy or been responsible.
law enforcement official not announced whether it castigated colleagues as something like that would Even so, his case refocused
conducting the raid told suspects government insid- “clowns” for lax security ever conduct business.” public attention on repeat-
Martin, court papers say. ers, Russian intelligence or measures. Soon after his ar- It’s unclear how Martin ed government failures to
“You’re a bad man.” someone else entirely. rest, they cast aspersions on came to the FBI’s atten- safeguard some of the na-
Later this month, about The question is important his character and motives, tion, but a redacted court tion’s most highly classified
three years after that raid, because the U.S. believes citing a binge-drinking order from a judge sug- information, with Martin
the case against Martin is North Korea and Russia habit, his arsenal of unregis- gests agents may have one of several contractors
scheduled to be resolved relied on the stolen tools, tered weapons and online been looking for a Shadow accused of mishandling or
in Baltimore’s federal court. which provide the means communication in Russian Brokers link when they ob- spilling government secrets.
But the identity of the Shad- to exploit software vulner- and other languages. tained search warrants for Most notable is Snowden, a
ow Brokers, and whoever abilities in critical infrastruc- The agents who searched his Twitter account and fellow Booz Allen contrac-
was responsible for a leak ture, in unleashing punish- his house that August 2016 property before the raid. tor facing U.S. charges and
with extraordinary national ing global cyberattacks on afternoon found a trove of The December 2018 rul- living in Russia.
security implications, will re- businesses, hospitals and documents in his car, home ing from U.S. District Judge The NSA has since done
main a public mystery even cities. The release, which and a dusty, unlocked Richard Bennett notes that more to protect its network
as the case concludes. occurred while the NSA shed. The 50 terabytes of the FBI was investigating and security and increased
Authorities have estab- was already under scru- information from 1996 to the online disclosure of sto- the monitoring of its em-
lished that Martin walked tiny because of Snowden’s 2016 included personal len government property. ployees, said security and
off with thousands of pages 2013 disclosures, raised details of government em- It cites a Twitter message counterintelligence direc-
of secret documents over questions about the gov- ployees and “Top Secret” from an account allegedly tor Marlisa Smith. Booz Allen
a two-decade career in ernment’s ability to main- email chains, handwritten belonging to Martin — @ scrambled to respond to
national security, most re- tain secrets . notes describing the NSA’s HAL_999999999 — that re- Martin’s arrest, hiring ex-FBI
cently with the NSA, whose “It was extraordinarily dam- classified computer infra- quested a meeting with director Robert Mueller to
headquarters is about aging, probably more structure, and descriptions someone whose name is investigate. Since Martin’s
15 miles from his home in damaging than Snowden,” of classified technical op- blacked out and stated arrest, the company said it
Glen Burnie, Maryland. He cybersecurity expert Bruce erations. “shelf life, three weeks.” has added policies to im-
pleaded guilty to a single Schneier said of the Shad- Defense lawyers paint him In a likely reference to the prove its review process of
count of willful retention of ow Brokers leaks. “Those as a compulsive hoarder Shadow Brokers disclosures, employees at hiring and to
national defense informa- tools were a lot of money whose quirky tendencies investigators said tweets ensure managers are more
tion and faces a nine-year to design and create.” may have led him astray from Martin’s account in touch with their subordi-
prison sentence under a Yet none of that is likely to but who never betrayed his were sent hours before sto- nates.
plea deal. be mentioned at Martin’s country. len government records As for the mystery of who or
Investigators found in his July 17 sentencing. The “What began as an effort were advertised and post- what is behind the Shadow
home and car detailed hearing instead will turn on by Mr. Martin to be good ed online. Investigators also Brokers, there’s little cer-
description of computer dramatically different de- at his job, to be better at alleged that Martin would tainty that the government
infrastructure and classi- pictions of the enigmatic his job, to be as good as he have had access to the will ever publicly resolve
fied technical operations Martin, a Navy veteran, could be, to see the whole same classified information that lingering question, es-
in a raid that took place longtime government con- picture at his job, became as what appeared online. pecially given the classified
two weeks after the Shad- tractor — most recently at something more compli- The recipient of the mes- nature of the theft and the
ow Brokers surfaced online Booz Allen Hamilton — and cated than that,” public sage is redacted, although embarrassment it caused
to advertise the sale of doctoral candidate at the defender James Wyda said Politico reported it went to the U.S.q