Ex-CIA engineer convicted of massive Vault7 data leak that exposed agency secrets on WikiLeaks

The leak showed how the CIA Apple and Android smartphones in foreign espionage operations

A former software engineer for the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been found guilty of leaking a cache of secret hacking tools to whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, in one of the biggest such thefts in the CIA's history.

In a Manhattan federal court on Wednesday, Joshua Schulte, 33, was convicted of eight counts of espionage and one count of obstruction relating to the so-called Vault 7 leak.

Vault 7 was a collection of malware, trojans and zero-day exploits that became accessible to foreign intelligence organisations, hackers and cyber extortionists from all around the world after they were released into the public domain by WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks started publishing the stolen information in March 2017. The leak of some 8,761 documents showed how the CIA personnel used internet-connected TVs as listening devices and hacked Apple and Android smartphones in foreign espionage operations.

The CIA's own investigators estimated that up to 34 terabytes of data could have been stolen in the leak.

The CIA was also forced to immediately stop some of its intelligence operations as a result of the disclosure.

Investigators raced to identify the culprit, and arrived at the conclusion that Schulte, a software engineer for the agency, could have been. Schulte worked as a programmer at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where he had contributed to the development of hacking tools.

He was taken into custody in 2018, and he has been in detention ever since.

The US Department of Justice said that Schulte resigned from his position at the CIA in November 2016 and was motivated to leak the data out of spite because he was dissatisfied with the way that management treated him.

Schulte claimed that he was framed and made a scapegoat for the leak because of the issues he was having with management.

The government's first effort to convict Schulte in 2020 resulted in a mistrial when the jury found him guilty of contempt of court and lying to FBI agents, but they couldn't agree on the other accusations.

That led to the second trial, where Schulte choose to represent himself. He said that the CIA was using him as a scapegoat for its own mistakes.

Schulte said in his closing remarks that "hundreds of people had access" to the leaked documents and "hundreds of people could have stolen it."

"The government's case is riddled with reasonable doubt," he added.

The charges he was convicted on are all related to collecting, stealing, and disseminating classified information and obstruction of justice for lying to investigators about it.

Schulte was found guilty of "one of the most brazen and damaging acts of espionage in American history," according to US Attorney Damian Williams.

Williams said that Schulte exposed to the US adversaries some of the nation's most important intelligence-gathering cyber tools used to combat terrorist groups and other malign influences throughout the world.

He added that Schulte was aware that the leak would make the CIA's tools unusable and negatively impact "our intelligence community by providing critical intelligence to those who wish to do us harm."

Schulte has not yet received a sentence. That will depend on the outcome of other charges he faces for possessing and transporting child pornography.