WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Former US Department of Energy employee Charles Eccleston has been indicted for attempting to steal nuclear weapons secrets by way of attacking the Department employees’ computers and provide the secrets to a foreign country, the Department of Justice announced in a statement on Friday.
“The goal of the attack was to cause damage to the computer network of the Department of Energy through a computer virus that Eccleston believed was being delivered to particular department employees through e-mails, and to extract sensitive, nuclear weapons-related government information that Eccleston believed would be collected by a foreign country,” the Justice Department said.
Eccleston was busted by undercover FBI agents who posed as representative of the foreign county promising payment for the information.
“Computer intrusions are among the greatest cyber threats to our national security,” Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office Andrew McCabe said in the statement. “As threats to the US government become increasingly complex, the FBI will continue to evolve in order to counter these threats.”
Eccleston is charged with four felony offenses which include one count of wire fraud as well as three counts of crimes that involve unauthorized access of computers, each of which is considered a felony punishable by a fine or imprisonment as long as ten years.
The Justice Department explained that Eccleston is only being charged with attempted violations because the FBI ensured no computer virus was actually embedded in the email attack.
