Brothers charged after allegedly deleting 96 government databases and consulting AI

Two brothers who were previously convicted a decade ago for hacking into US State Department systems have been charged for allegedly deleting databases and documents belonging to three government agencies, the Department of Justice said. The men, identified as Muneeb Akhter and Sohaib Akhter, both 34 and of Alexandria, Virginia, worked as federal contractors for an undisclosed Washington, DC company that provides software and services to 45 US agencies.

According to an indictment unsealed Thursday, the brothers were fired on February 18 at about 4:55 p.m. and prosecutors say they began trying to access their employer’s systems minutes later. Prosecutors allege one account had already been terminated while the other allegedly accessed a government agency database on the employer’s server, issued commands to block other users from connecting or making changes, and then issued a command to delete 96 databases, many containing sensitive investigative files and records related to Freedom of Information Act matters.

Prosecutors say the men lacked knowledge of the database commands needed to cover up the alleged deletions and turned to an AI chat tool for help. The indictment alleges that one minute after deleting Department of Homeland Security information, Muneeb asked the AI tool "how do i clear system logs from SQL servers after deleting databases," and shortly afterward queried how to clear event and application logs from Windows Server 2012.

Key Topics

Tech, Muneeb Akhter, Sohaib Akhter, Homeland Security, Foia