A foreign hacker unknowingly compromised a cache of the FBI’s documents on Jeffrey Epstein three years ago and was so disgusted by what they saw in the files that they threatened to report them to the FBI.
The cyber criminal hacked into the New York Field Office’s network and stumbled across child abuse images related to the federal probe into Epstein on Feb. 12, 2023 without realizing they had breached a law enforcement server, sources told Reuters.
The befuddled hacker was so horrified by the troves of disturbing content they found on the server that they left a message, unknowingly to the FBI, threatening to turn the owner of the content over to that very agency.
They refused to believe that the actual FBI operated the server until bureau officials joined a video chat with them and displayed their law enforcement credentials in front of the web camera, the source said.
The unidentified individual — believed to be a lone cyber criminal rather than an agent of a foreign government — was able to penetrate the FBI’s network after a long-time staffer and special agent mistakenly left a server open at the Child Exploitation Forensic Lab, according to the outlet.
The snafu went unnoticed until Spivack returned to his computer the next day and received a warning that the network had been compromised.
The FBI then discovered unusual activity indicating someone was “combing through certain files pertaining to the Epstein investigation.”
The bureau conducted an internal investigation into the breach and said it was “an isolated” incident.
“The FBI restricted access to the malicious actor and rectified the network. The investigation remains ongoing, so we do not have further comments to provide at this time,” the FBI said in a statement to the publication.
A source told the outlet that the intrusion was more cyber criminal in nature, rather than an attack from a foreign government. Still, the source admitted they didn’t know much else about the hacker, including their country of origin or what exact files they accessed.
It’s not immediately clear if any of the files gleaned by the hacker were published in the Department of Justice’s sprawling drop of documents related to its probe of the dead pedophile.
The DOJ’s initial rollout of the Epstein files was criticized for both delays and redaction errors.
Some blacked-out portions of the documents released in December, crossed out in Adobe Acrobat, could be manually unredacted when pasted into Google Docs or Microsoft Word.
Other redactions appeared haphazard, like the inclusion of “several thousand documents” that accidentally identified the victims or scrubbing Epstein’s face while keeping other known associates visible.
Another 47,000 files excluded “for further review” were published last week.
With Post wires
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