Steam profile got leaker of Ukraine War secrets arrested by the FBI
It’s usually related to War Thunder when we hear of military secrets being leaked on a gaming forum, but the recent publication of secret US documents about the Ukraine War on a Discord server related to Minecraft was on another level entirely. The FBI has now arrested a suspect in this case: Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, who was identified in part because of his Steam profile, The New York Times reported.
Teixeira allegedly shared hundreds of secret papers containing information about the ongoing Ukraine War with his friends – not out of a desire to be a whistleblower or because he wanted to sabotage the war effort, one of the members of this Discord server is quoted as saying, but because he “just wanted to inform some of his friends about what’s going on.”
Some of the documents were later shared by another member of the Discord server Thug Shaker Central, which had “guns, racist online memes, and video games” as its core theme, on more public places, from where they spread to sites like 4chan and eventually Russian-speaking Telegram channels.
While US officials have widely downplayed the significance of this leak, it could have serious consequences for the intelligence sources, who collected the information in those documents, in case the Russians figure out who they are and what methods the US used to collect the data.
Investigators were able to trace the leak back to Teixeira thanks to his Steam profile – his account on the gaming platform led them to his Instagram page, where the Airman First Class had posted pictures of his childhood home’s kitchen, which in turn exactly matched the countertop on which the leaked documents were photographed.
It’s still unknown how someone of Teixeira’s rank even got hold of sensitive documents like the ones he leaked – a concerning question for defense officials, who have some of their own investigations to conduct.
In a statement towards PCGamer, a Discord representative confirmed that the platform had cooperated with the investigation and reiterated that while it “places a premium on the privacy of our users, we believe that our platform best serves the needs of all when we collectively engage in responsible online behavior.” Sharing classified information is against the terms of service.
