Justin Liverman, 23, was a member of a club dubbed “Crackas With Attitude” that showed the private online records of many top law enforcement leaders, including then-CIA chief John Brennan and James R. Clapper Jr., the executive of national intelligence at the time.
It was a British teenager, identified as “Cracka,” who really broke into those records by mimicking the officials or employees of their cooperation providers. Liverman and Andrew Otto Boggs, also 23, helped Cracka’s exploits and used the presented information to harass the victims.
“These are no pranks,” Judge Gerald Bruce Lee said in sentencing Liverman on Friday in federal court in Alexandria, Va. “This network hacking, Crackas With Attitude, caused chaos. Your intention was clear, and that was to wreak havoc.”
It was expressly “despicable,” Lee continued, that Liverman harassed the wives and threatened the kids of several targets.
Liverman, of North Carolina, chose any of the victims and drove the harassment operations against them. He paid for an hourly, month-long “phone bombing” campaign going threatening and explicit letters for former FBI deputy director Mark Giuliano. Liverman also texted Giuliano’s phone, asking about his “slut wife” and suggesting that he would “keep a close eye on your family, especially your son!”
Giuliano and other victims are not identified in court papers, but their names have been confirmed by officials familiar with the details of the case.
Through Giuliano’s credentials, Cracka got into the Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal, a network system that gives firms around the world access to unknown but sensitive law enforcement information. Liverman asked personal details on Miami police officers, which he then posted online.
“Liverman leveraged Cracka’s superior social engineering skills to his own ends namely, to create disruption despair through harassment and to advance to perform his online fraud of being an administrator of a hacking group and a successful hacker himself,” Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Longobardo composed in his sentencing memorandum.
According to Liverman’s attorneys, Boggs was undeviatingly involved in cracking into the law enforcement databases and exhibiting the personal information of 20,000 people.
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