Category Archives: Department of Homeland Security

The NYT’s Doing the WH Work to Close Gitmo

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Hundreds of Convicted Terrorists
Are Already Held in U.S. Prisons

By HANNAH FAIRFIELD and TIM WALLACE

NYT’s Republican leaders have blocked the closing of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, because they say they do not want terrorists held on United States soil. But American prisons currently hold 443 convicted terrorists, far more than the 89 men who remain imprisoned in Cuba.

The New York Times was able to confirm locations for about a third of the terrorists, shown on the map above. The Department of Justice would not release the names or locations of the other prisoners who had been convicted of terrorism.

The most notorious terrorists are being held in the maximum security sections of just a few federal prisons. But many others, serving lesser sentences for crimes like financing attacks or bomb hoaxes, are at facilities across the country.

Florence, Colo.

At least 30 convicted terrorists in the SuperMax

Many of the most well-known convicted terrorists are at the highest security prison in the country: the supermax in Florence, Colo., about 100 miles south of Denver.

Zacarias Moussaoui, a member of Al Qaeda who was directly linked to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is there, as is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers. Richard Reid, known as the shoe bomber, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the underwear bomber, are also held there.

Terre Haute, Ind., and Marion, Ill.

Medium security prison At least 12 convicted terrorists

 

Medium security prison At least 11 convicted terrorists

 

At least 25 convicted terrorists are held in two federal prisons in Indiana and Illinois that have special Communications Management Units, designed to isolate certain prisoners from other inmates and limit contact with the outside world.

Mail and telephone calls are restricted. Prisoners in the units are not allowed to have any physical contact with visitors or family members. The majority of prisoners in the units, which were opened in 2006 and 2008, are Muslims.

Other Prisons Across the Country

The Hazelton, W. Va., complex has four separate prisons. Inmates here include Hawo Mohamed Hassan, one of only seven female convicted terrorists The Times was able to locate.

The low security prison on Terminal Island, at the Port of Los Angeles, houses Mohammad El-Mezain, who was convicted of providing material support to Hamas in 2009.

This multilevel security prison in Brooklyn, New York, houses two inmates with Qaeda ties and one linked to the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.

Hundreds of other convicted terrorists are held in prisons around the country. Many of these are for lesser crimes and shorter sentences.

Sabri Benkahla, who is held at a federal prison in Washington, D.C., was convicted in 2007 of perjury, obstructing justice and giving false statements to the F.B.I. He had denied visiting an overseas jihad training camp eight years prior, and denied knowing that several of his contacts were suspected of being terrorists.

The Rising Number of Convicted
Terrorists in American Prisons

400

300

International

200

100

Domestic

0

2007

2009

2011

2013

2015

The New York Times|Source: Federal Bureau of Prisons

The number of convicted terrorists in American prisons has increased by more than 150 inmates since 2007. The number of domestic terrorists, some of whose crimes are related to white supremacy or eco-terrorism, has fallen in recent years, but the number of convicted terrorists who are not American citizens continues to rise.

How a Terrorist Thinks

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مركز المسبارal Mesbar Studies and Research Center

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   The Grey Zone:  Giulio Meotti writes on the April 4, 2016 Gatestone Institute website about the disturbingly high support among young European Muslims for suicide bombings and the Islamic State’s pursuit of establishing a new Caliphate.  Mr. Meotti writes that “among young European Muslims, support for suicide bombings range from 22 percent in Germany, to 29 percent in Spain, 35 percent in Britain, and 42 percent in France,” according to a recent PEW Research poll.  “In Britain, one in five Muslims have sympathy for the Caliphate; and, today, more British Muslims join ISIS than the British Army.  In the Netherlands,” the PEW Research poll showed that “80 percent of the Dutch Turks see “nothing wrong,” in ISIS.”  And, according to a ComRes report, commissioned by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 27 percent of British Muslims have sympathy for the terrorists who attacked the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris.  An ICM poll, released by Newsweek, revealed that 16 percent of French Muslims support ISIS; and, the number rises to 27 percent among those aged 18-24.  In dozens of French schools, the “minute of silence,” was interrupted by Muslim pupils who protested it,” Mr. Meotti wrote.

”How deep is ISIS’s popularity in Belgium?,” Mr. Meotti asks.  “Very deep,” he warns.  “The most accurate study is a report from The Voices From the Blogs, which highlights the high degree of pro-ISIS sympathy in Belgium.  The report monitored and analyzed more than two million Arabic messages around the world via Twitter, FaceBook, and blogs regarding ISIS’s actions in the Middle East.”

“The most enthusiastic comments about ISIS come from Qatar at 47 percent, then Pakistan at 35 percent, third overall was Belgium — where 31 percent of the tweets in Arabic on the Islamic State are positive — more than Libya (24%), Oman (25%), Jordan (19%), Saudi Arabia (20%), and Iraq (20%).”

    Overall, some 42 million people in the Arab world sympathize with the Islamic State, according to polling data examined by The Gatestone Institute.

     As Mr. Meotti notes, “even if these polls and surveys must be taken with some caution, they all indicate a deep, and vibrant “gray zone,” which is feeding the Islamic Jihad in Europe and the Middle East.  We are talking about millions of Muslims who show sympathy, understanding, and affinity with the ideology and goals of the Islamic State.”

     The shockingly high support for the Islamic State among the youth of Europe is a foreboding sign.  As eminent British historian Max Hastings recently wrote, the influx of millions of Muslim migrants into Britain and the rest of Europe, may fundamentally alter the character and culture of Europe — and, not necessarily for the better.  While Mr. Hastings appreciates and understands that Britain and the rest of Europe and the West need to accept a large number of these displaced refugees as new citizens — he has this recent warning in London’s The Daily Mail Online:  “If any significant fraction of the hundreds of millions suffering hardship, persecution and famine in Africa and the Middle East succeed in transferring themselves to Europe, I fear that our civilization will be transformed in ways most of us cannot endorse, nor even find tolerable.”

     “How many [more] Muslims will this ISIS virus be able to infect in the vast European “gray zone?” Mr. Meotti asks.  “The answer will determine our future,” he adds.

There is more from IPTNews:

For weeks, Farid Bouamran, a Dutch-Moroccan immigrant who has lived 30 years in Amsterdam, watched as his son Achraf became increasingly radicalized, tuning in to videos and Twitter accounts online. Within two months, Achraf had traded in his jeans for a dishdasha, or robe, grown a beard, and begun spending time online with Belgian youth his father once called “men with long Arabic names: Abou this and Abou that.”

Panicked, Bouamran took every measure he could think of to intervene: he brought Achraf to his own mosque to hear the imam speak of a peaceful Islam. He canceled his son’s Internet account, forbid him to see his radical Muslim friends, and even followed him when he went out at night.

It was no use. Just after Christmas 2013, Farid Bouamran sat in his living room with officers from Dutch intelligence agency AIVD and told them he believed Achraf was about to leave for Syria to join in the jihad. Please, he begged them. Take his passport. Stop him.

Not to worry, the officers assured him, he won’t get past our borders.

But he did get past, flying out of Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport the next night to Turkey, and from there, making his way to the Islamic State.

A year later, disillusioned by the realities of the life he found there, Achraf determined to return home. But en route to the Netherlands in January 2015, a U.S. missile attack on Raqqa took his life. He was 17 years old. More on the post is here.

 

1000 Foreign Nationals, 21 Arrested and a Fake School

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Lots of questions to be asked here but let’s start with: What was the tip that started this investigation? The next question is: Who investigated the school to give it a license or accreditation or did it have one? The last question: What happened to the 1000 foreign nationals?
Oh wait, here is an update…this was an FBI sting operation. The Feds actually created the school for the sting operation. My bad, I should have known.
Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, April 5, 2016

21 Defendants Charged with Fraudulently Enabling Hundreds of Foreign Nationals to Remain in the United States Through Fake ‘Pay to Stay’ New Jersey College

“College” Created as Part of Homeland Security Investigations Sting Operation

Twenty-one brokers, recruiters and employers from across the United States who allegedly conspired with more than 1,000 foreign nationals to fraudulently maintain student visas and obtain foreign worker visas through a “pay to stay” New Jersey college were arrested this morning by federal agents, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman for the District of New Jersey announced.

The defendants (see chart below) were arrested in New Jersey and Washington by special agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and charged in 14 complaints with conspiracy to commit visa fraud, conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit and other offenses.  All the defendants, with the exception of Yanjun Lin aka Aimee Lin, 25, of Flushing, New York, will appear today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Steven C. Mannion of the District of New Jersey in Newark, New Jersey, federal court.  Lin will appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Karen L. Strombom in the Western District of Washington federal court.

“‘Pay to Stay’ schemes not only damage our perception of legitimate student and foreign worker visa programs, they also pose a very real threat to national security,” U.S. Attorney Fishman said.  “Today’s arrests, which were made possible by the great undercover work of our law enforcement partners, stopped 21 brokers, recruiters and employers across multiple states who recklessly exploited our immigration system for financial gain.”

“While the United States fully supports international education, we will vigorously investigate those who seek to exploit the U.S. immigration system,” said Director Sarah R. Saldaña for ICE.  “As a result of this operation, HSI special agents have successfully identified and closed a gap in the student visa system and have arrested 21 individuals alleged to be amongst the system’s most egregious violators.”

“Individuals engaged in schemes that would undermine the remarkable educational opportunities afforded to international students represent an affront to those who play by the rules,” said Special Agent in Charge Terence S. Opiola for ICE Homeland Security Investigations.  “These unscrupulous individuals undermine the integrity of the immigration system.  Our special agents are committed to addressing, identifying fraud in order to better protect the system as a whole.”

According to the complaints unsealed today and statements made in court:

The defendants, many of whom operated recruiting companies for purported international students, were arrested for their involvement in an alleged scheme to enroll foreign nationals as students in the University of Northern New Jersey, a purported for-profit college located in Cranford, New Jersey (UNNJ).  Unbeknownst to the defendants and the foreign nationals they conspired with, however, the UNNJ was created in September 2013 by HSI federal agents.

Through the UNNJ, undercover HSI agents investigated criminal activities associated with the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), including, but not limited to, student visa fraud and the harboring of aliens for profit.  The UNNJ was not staffed with instructors or educators, had no curriculum and conducted no actual classes or education activities.  The UNNJ operated solely as a storefront location with small offices staffed by federal agents posing as school administrators.

UNNJ represented itself as a school that, among other things, was authorized to issue a document known as a “Certificate of Eligibility for Nonimmigrant (F-1) Student Status – for Academic and Language Students,” commonly referred to as a Form I-20.  This document, which certifies that a foreign national has been accepted to a school and would be a full-time student, typically enables legitimate foreign students to obtain an F-1 student visa.  The F-1 student visa allows a foreign student to enter and/or remain in the United States while the student makes normal progress toward the completion of a full course of study in an SEVP accredited institution.

During the investigation, HSI special agents identified hundreds of foreign nationals, primarily from China and India, who previously entered the U.S. on F-1 non-immigrant student visas to attend other SEVP- accredited schools.  Through various recruiting companies and business entities located in New Jersey, California, Illinois, New York and Virginia, the defendants then enabled approximately 1,076 of these foreign individuals – all of whom were willing participants in the scheme – to fraudulently maintain their nonimmigrant status in the U.S. on the false pretense that they continued to participate in full courses of study at the UNNJ.

Acting as recruiters, the defendants solicited the involvement of UNNJ administrators to participate in the scheme.  During the course of their dealings with undercover agents, the defendants fully acknowledged that none of their foreign national clients would attend any actual courses, earn actual credits, or make academic progress toward an actual degree in a particular field of study.  Rather, the defendants facilitated the enrollment of their foreign national clients in UNNJ to fraudulently maintain student visa status, in exchange for kickbacks, or “commissions.”  The defendants also facilitated the creation of hundreds of false student records, including transcripts, attendance records and diplomas, which were purchased by their foreign national conspirators for the purpose of deceiving immigration authorities.

In other instances, the defendants used UNNJ to fraudulently obtain work authorization and work visas for hundreds of their clients.  By obtaining this authorization, a number of defendants were able to outsource their foreign national clients as full-time employees with numerous U.S.-based corporations, also in exchange for commission fees.  Other defendants devised phony IT projects that were purportedly to occur at the school.  These defendants then created and caused to be created false contracts, employment verification letters, transcripts and other documents.  The defendants then paid the undercover agents thousands of dollars to put the school’s letterhead on the sham documents, to sign the documents as school administrators and to otherwise go along with the scheme.

All of these bogus documents created the illusion that prospective foreign workers would be working at the school in some IT capacity or project.  The defendants then used these fictitious documents fraudulently to obtain labor certifications issued by the U.S. Secretary of Labor and then ultimately to petition the U.S. government to obtain H1-B visas for non-immigrants.  These fictitious documents were then submitted to the U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS).  In the vast majority of circumstances, the foreign worker visas were not issued because USCIS was advised of the ongoing undercover operation.

In addition, starting today, HSI Newark is coordinating with the ICE Counterterrorism and Criminal Exploitation Unit (CTCEU) and the SEVP to terminate the nonimmigrant student status for the foreign nationals associated with UNNJ, and if applicable, administratively arrest and place them into removal proceedings.

The chart below outlines the charges for each defendant.  The charges of conspiracy to commit visa fraud and making a false statement each carry a maximum potential penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.  The charges of conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit and H1-B Visa fraud each carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and $250,000 fine.

The charges and allegations contained in the complaints are merely accusations and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

U.S. Attorney Fishman credited special agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, under the leadership of Director Saldaña; HSI Newark, under the leadership of Special Agent in Charge Opiola; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Counterterrorism and Criminal Exploitation Unit, under the leadership of Unit Chief Robert Soria;  U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Fraud Detection and National Security Section, under the leadership of Associate Director Matthew Emrich; the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, under the leadership of Deputy Assistant Director Louis M. Farrell; U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Vermont Service Center, Security Fraud Division, under the leadership of Associate Center Director Bradley J. Brouillette; U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs, Office of Fraud Prevention Programs, under the leadership of Director Josh Glazeroff; and the FBI, Joint Terrorism Task Force, under the leadership of Timothy Gallagher in Newark, for their contributions to the investigation.

He also thanked the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges (ACCSC), under the leadership of Executive Director Michale S. McComis, and the New Jersey Office of Higher Education, under the leadership of Secretary of Higher Education Rochelle R. Hendricks, for their assistance.  In addition, U.S. Attorney Fishman thanked the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission and the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, as well as the U.S. Attorney’s Offices for the Central District of California, Eastern District of New York, Eastern District of Virginia, Southern District of New York, Central District of Illinois, Peoria Division, and the Northern District of Georgia for their help.

The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Dennis C. Carletta of the U.S. Attorney’s Office National Security Unit and Sarah Devlin of the Office’s Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Unit.

Defendant Name Age Residence Charges
Jun Shen aka Jeanette Shen 32 Levittown, New York – Conspiracy to commit visa fraud

– Conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit

 
Jiaming Wang aka Celine Wang, 34 Los Angeles, California – Conspiracy to commit visa fraud

– Conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit

 
Philip Junlin Li

 

 33 Los Angeles, California – Conspiracy to commit visa fraud

– Conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit

 
Zitong Wen aka Kate Wen 27 Rowland Heights, California – Conspiracy to commit visa fraud

– Conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit

 
Chaun Kit Yuen aka Alvin Yuen 24 Rowland Heights, California – Conspiracy to commit visa fraud

– Conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit

 
Ting Zue aka Tiffany Xue 28 Flushing, New York – Conspiracy to commit visa fraud

– Conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit

 
Yanjun Lin aka Aimee Lin 25 Flushing, New York – Conspiracy to commit visa fraud

– Conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit

 
Zheng Zhang aka Vicky Zhang 26 New York, New York – Conspiracy to commit visa fraud

– Conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit

 
Xue Yong Liu aka Jack Liu 29 New York, New York – Conspiracy to commit visa fraud

– Conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit

 
Minglu Li aka Vivian Lee 36 Los Angeles, California – Conspiracy to commit visa fraud

– Conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit

 
Jason Li aka Jason Liu aka Fen Lee 43 Flushing, New York – Conspiracy to commit visa fraud

– Conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit
Tajesh Kodali 44 Edison, New Jersey – Conspiracy to commit visa fraud

– Conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit

 
Jyoti Patel 34 Franklin Park, New Jersey – Conspiracy to commit visa fraud

– Conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit

 
Shahjadi M. Parvin aka Sarah Patel 54 Hackensack, New Jersey – Conspiracy to commit visa fraud

– Conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit

 
Narendra Singh Plaha 44 Hillsborough, New Jersey – Conspiracy to commit visa fraud

– Conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit

 
Sanjeev Sukhija 35 North Brunswick, New Jersey – Conspiracy to commit visa fraud

– Conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit

 
Harpreet Sachdeva 26 Somerset, New Jersey – Conspiracy to commit visa fraud

– Conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit

 
Avinash Shankar 35 Bloomington, Illinois – Conspiracy to commit visa fraud

– Conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit

 
Karthik Nimmala 32 Smyrna, Georgia – Conspiracy to commit visa fraud

– Conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit

 
Govardhan Dyavarashetty aka Vardhan Shetty 35 Avenel, New Jersey – H1-B Visa fraud

– False statements

– Conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit

 
Syed Qasim Abbas aka Qasim Reza aka Nayyer 41 Brooklyn, New York – H1-B Visa fraud

– False statements

– Conspiracy to harbor aliens for profit

 

Who is APT6?

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Darkhotel APT hackers campaign ‘followed’ global CEOs using hotel networks

A state-backed espionage group has spent years targeting senior executives from large global companies using a specialised Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) that can follow and steal data from them as they move around the globe from hotel to hotel, Kaspersky has revealed.

TechWorld: Interestingly, despite some smarts, the sophistication level isn’t always top drawer, which points towards China rather than the US or Russia. The victim list is another hint at that too.

“Overall, victims in our sinkhole logs and KSN data were found across the globe, with the majority in Japan, Taiwan, China, Russia, Korea and Hong Kong,” (in that order) noted Kaspersky Lab’s researchers.

US executives were on the list but far below the prevalence for targeting Japanese CEOs and managers. And the attackers seem to go after almost everyone with the right job title, with sectors hit including electronics, finance, manufacturing, pharma, cosmetics, chemicals, automotive, defence, law, military and even NGOs – the last one has been an obsession for Chinese actors. More here.

FBI Says a Mysterious Hacking Group Has Had Access to US Govt Files for Years

Motherboard: The feds warned that “a group of malicious cyber actors,” whom security experts believe to be the government-sponsored hacking group known as , “have compromised and stolen sensitive information from various government and commercial networks” since at least 2011, according to an FBI alert obtained by Motherboard.

The alert, which is also available online, shows that foreign government hackers are still successfully hacking and stealing data from US government’s servers, their activities going unnoticed for years. This comes months after the US government revealed that a group of hackers, widely believed to be working for the Chinese government, had for more than a year infiltrated the computer systems of the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM. In the process, they stole highly sensitive data about several millions of government workers and even spies.

In the alert, the FBI lists a long series of websites used as command and control servers to launch phishing attacks “in furtherance of computer network exploitation (CNE) activities [read: hacking] in the United States and abroad since at least 2011.”

Domains controlled by the hackers were “suspended” as of late December 2015, according to the alert, but it’s unclear if the hackers have been pushed out or they are still inside the hacked networks.

“Anybody who’s been in that network all this long, they could be anywhere and everywhere.”

“Looks like they were in for years before they were caught, god knows where they are,” Michael Adams, an information security expert who served more than two decades in the US Special Operations Command, and who has reviewed the alert, told Motherboard. “Anybody who’s been in that network all this long, they could be anywhere and everywhere.”

For Adams, this alert shows that the US government still is not in control of what’s going on inside its most sensitive networks. This alert, he said, is an admission of that.

“It’s just flabbergasting,” he told me. “How many times can this keep happening before we finally realized we’re screwed?”

The FBI wouldn’t comment on the alert, only saying that it was just another example of a routine notice to private partners, “provided in order to help systems administrators guard against the actions of persistent cyber criminals.”

This group of “persistent cyber criminals” is especially persistent. The group is none other than the “APT6” hacking group, according to sources within the antivirus and threat intelligence industry. There isn’t much public literature about the group, other than a couple of old reports, but APT6, which stand for Advanced Persistent Threat 6, is a codename given to a group believed to be working for the Chinese government.

“This is one of the earlier APTs, they definitely go back further than 2011 […] more like 2008.”

“This is one of the earlier APTs, they definitely go back further than 2011 or whatever—more like 2008 I believe,” Kurt Baumgartner, a researcher at the Russian security firm Kaspersky Lab, told me. (Baumgartner declined to say whether the group was Chinese or not, but said its targets align with the interest of a state-sponsored attacker.)

Kyrk Storer, a spokesperson with FireEye, confirmed that the domains listed in the alert “were associated with APT6 and one of their malware backdoors,” and that the hackers “targeted the US and UK defense industrial base.”

Another researcher at a different security company, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about the hacker’s activities, said this was the “current campaign of an older group,” and said there “likely” was an FBI investigation ongoing. (Several other security companies declined to comment for this story.)

At this point, it’s unclear whether the FBI’s investigation will lead to any concrete result. But two years after the US government charged five Chinese military members for hacking US companies, it’s clear hackers haven’t given up attacking US targets.

Guccifer Appears in U.S. Court, Remember Hillary and Sid

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Are we to make anything of the timing of this court appearance? We cant get our hopes up but this is for sure curious.

The grand jury indictment full text is here.

Romanian Hacker “Guccifer” Appears in U.S. Court

SecurityWeek: Lazar Lehel, the 44-year-old Romanian national accused of hacking into the online accounts of many public figures, has been extradited to the United States where he made his first court appearance last week.

Romania’s High Court of Cassation and Justice agreed to extradite Lehel, known online as Guccifer, to the United States for a period of 18 months. U.S. authorities said the man hacked into the email and social media accounts of two former presidents, a former cabinet member, a former presidential advisor, and a former member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff between December 2012 and January 2014. The indictment does not name any of the victims and refers to them as “victim” 1 through 5.

The hacker has been accused of releasing private emails, personal photographs, and medical and financial information belonging to his victims.

Lehel has been charged in the United States with three counts of wire fraud, three counts of gaining unauthorized access to a protected computer, cyber stalking, aggravated identity theft, and obstruction of justice. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia said the man faces up to 20 years in prison, with a two-year mandatory minimum for the identity theft charges.

In an interview last year with a Romanian journalist, Lehel said that if he is extradited to the United States, he will “plead guilty, no problem.”

During the time he was active, Guccifer also hacked into the accounts of various actors, journalists and businessmen, but the charges filed by U.S. authorities appear to focus on the attacks targeting officials.

Lehel was arrested by Romanian authorities in January 2014 after hacking into the email accounts of Romanian politician Corina Cretu and George Maior, the head of the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI). He was sentenced by a Romanian court to seven years in prison for these attacks.

The hacker had been known by Romanian law enforcement as “Little Fume.” He had previously received a three-year suspended sentence for hacking into the accounts of many Romanian celebrities.

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2013, Daily News:

Online hacker ‘Guccifer’ breaks into email accounts of former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal

Guccifer got into the email account of Sidney Blumethal, a former aide to Bill Clinton and a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The attack comes just days after breaking into Colin Powell’s Facebook account.

He’s a real political hack, all right.

The online prankster known as “Guccifer” has crossed party lines and hacked the AOL account of a former Bill Clinton aide — just days after the cyber creep breached former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Facebook and email accounts.

“Guccifer” had seemed to be targeting the GOP before his latest round of online assaults — he’d spent recent weeks hacking into the emails of George W. Bush’s family and friends.

But last week “Guccifer” got into former Clinton aide Sidney Blumethal’s email account, according to thesmokinggun.com.

Blumenthal, 64, worked as an assistant and senior adviser to Clinton during the President’s second term.

He was also a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign and has stayed close with her since.

“Guccifer” accessed Blumenthal’s correspondence with Clinton dating back to 2005, including sensitive foreign policy and intelligence memos shared while Clinton was secretary of state in the Obama administration, according to thesmokinggun. The hacker sent screen grabs of the sensitive Clinton emails — stamped with his “Guccifer” logo — to the website, it reported.

His cyber assault on the high-profile Democrat came just a few days after “Guccifer” defaced Powell’s Facebook page.

“Guccifer” hacked in Monday morning and uploaded messages berating former President George W. Bush.

“You will burn in hell, Bush!” read one post.

“Kill the illuminati! Tomorrow’s world will be a world free of illuminati or will be no more!” he wrote in another.

Powell later apologized on his Facebook page for “all the stupid, obscene posts that are popping up.”