OAN Deven Berryhill
UPDATED 5:30 PM PT – Tuesday, February 21, 2023
In a statement on Tuesday, The United States government said that they had launched an investigation after Independent Cybersecurity researcher Anurag Sen had discovered a Pentagon email data leak on February 8th.
According to sources, it took 2 weeks for the United States military to finally shore up a three-terabyte data dump. The exposed emails had contained military emails connected to the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). The USSOCOM is an special Pentagon command in charge of counterterrorism and hostage rescue missions worldwide.
USSOCOM spokesman Ken McGraw said in an email, “We can confirm at this point is no one hacked U.S. Special Operations Command’s information systems.”
Anurag Sen, a good-faith security researcher, had discovered the exposed military server, first provided the details to TechCrunch and then alerted the U.S. government. Sen explained that anyone who knew the IP address of the server could access the data without a password until this past Monday. According to sources, it is not uncommon for large organizations to expose sensitive internal data by not configuring their computer servers properly.
TechCrunch.com reported one of the emails leaked contained a completed SF-86 security clearance questionnaire. The set type of documents has been known to contain highly sensitive personal health and background information for vetting potential government employees.