You probably remember 34-year-old twin brothers Muneeb and Sohaib Akhter. profile earlier this week. While they’ve had the technical skills to commit petty crimes (like stealing airline miles) for years, what really got them into serious trouble was last year’s deletion of 96 US government databases by the same federal IT contractor, Opexus, an hour after they were both fired. (Opexus had just learned that both brothers had previously been in prison for cyber fraud.)
The pair are less than cybercriminals galumphing quickies-namely, a pair of deranged idiots who thought asking an AI how to cover their tracks would get them out of federal prison.
One of the minor conundrums I encountered while writing the piece was that the government had a verbatim transcript of everything the brothers said to each other during their hour-long erasure spree. The two men lived together in Arlington, Virginia, so it made sense that they could be chatting in the same room rather than via text or instant message. So how did the government get access to the audio? Supersecret software bugs? Crazy corporate spyware running on company laptops? FBI agent in the bush with a microphone?
