Ex-NSA Employee Pleads Guilty to Leaking Classified Data to Russia
Oct 24, 2023
Cyber Espionage / Data Safety
A former employee of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has pleaded guilty to charges accusing him of attempting to transmit classified defense information to Russia. Jareh Sebastian Dalke, 31, served as an Information Systems Security Designer for the NSA from June 6, 2022, to July 1, 2022, where he had Top Secret clearance to access sensitive documents. The latest development comes more than a year after his arrest. "Dalke admitted that between August and September 2022, in order to demonstrate both his 'legitimate access and willingness to share,' he used an encrypted email account to transmit excerpts of three classified documents to an individual he believed to be a Russian agent," the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said in a Monday press release. In reality, the purported agent was an online covert employee working for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Dalke, a former U.S. Army soldier, is also alleged to have requested $85,000 in e