An ex-CIA engineer proven guilty for leaking the agency’s hacking toolset

On Thursday, Joshua Schulte, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) engineer has been convicted by the jury for the theft of the agency’s classified information.

Schulte was arrested in relation to the large cache of documents that Wikileaks had published throughout 2017. That string of CIA leaks known as “Vault 7” contains information on the tool and techniques the agency used to hack into the apple and android mobile phones for overseas spying.

It also contains details on how the CIA broke into computers and how it turned smart TVs into listening devices. A federal jury has found Schulte guilty over nine counts, including illegally gathering national defense information and then transmitting it.

According to The New York Times, Schulte was arrested after investigators traced the leaks to him. The former CIA engineer worked with a team in a secret building protected by armed guards to create tools, like malware, that was used to target the devices of suspected terrorists.

“In 2018, he was formally charged with 13 counts that included theft of classified information, obstruction of justice, as well as possessing and sending images and videos with child pornography. He’s still awaiting trial on charges of possessing child pornography, which he allegedly downloaded from 2009 until March 2017,” a source as per Engadget.

Schulte will face the court again in regard to the possession of child pornography before a sentencing date can be set. The nine counts he is convicted of are enough to keep him in prison for up to eighty years.