Security News > 2020 > March > Months-long trial of alleged CIA Vault 7 exploit leaker ends with hung jury: Ex-sysadmin guilty of contempt, lying to FBI

The extraordinary trial of a former CIA sysadmin accusing of leaking top-secret hacking tools to WikiLeaks has ended in a mistrial.

Some of those motions will ask for information from the prosecution that was kept from her during the trial, most controversially the case of "Michael," a co-worker of Schulte who was put on administrative leave by the CIA when evidence emerged linking him to the theft of the Vault 7 hacking tools.

The mistrial will be a significant embarrassment for the US government which spent years pulling the case together, and spent most of the past four weeks walking the jury through what it said was a well-planned theft by Schulte of various software tools that can be used to snoop on a wide range of modern electronics from smartphones to laptop computers.

At the center of the case is the extraordinary fact that the CIA had a hard time proving it was Schulte who stole the tools from a secure server in the heart of spies' headquarters.

Clearly those questions were sufficient for the jury to be unable to reach agreement on whether Schulte was guilty or not.

News URL

https://go.theregister.co.uk/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/09/cia_hacking_trial_verdict/