Pentagon Leaker Arrested Thanks To His Steam Profile
A Steam profile helped catch the alleged leaker of classified US Department of Defense documents. Jack Teixeira, an airman first class in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, has been arrested on suspicion of leaking sensitive intelligence material online. And, according to several investigations, he did it mostly for internet points.
The leaked documents made headlines earlier this week as they revealed US intelligence reports regarding weakness in "Ukrainian weaponry, air defense, and battalion sizes and readiness." They also revealed Russian casualty estimates, military planning, and diplomatic efforts with other national governments. Surprisingly, these docs first started getting more widely circulated on a Minecraft Discord server, but investigators soon traced that back to another Discord server called "Thug Shaker Central."
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Initially a private fan channel dedicated to military YouTuber Oxide, Thug Shaker Central later became a more general channel for discussions of video games, guns, and according to the New York Times, "racist online memes." The Washington Post spoke to a former user (the channel has since been taken down) who described its members as "a tightknit family" that "depended on each other."
Teixeira was the owner and operator of Thug Shaker Central and had been allegedly posting classified military documents he obtained as an IT specialist in the Air National Guard. "There is a little bit of showing off to friends," one user said of Teixeira's motives, "but as well as wanting to keep us informed."
From other users, it's clear that Teixeira never intended for the documents to leak, but they eventually did. According to open-source
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