Muneeb Akhter and Sohaib Akhter, twin brothers from Alexandria, Virginia, have landed in legal trouble once more, years after their previous conviction for infiltrating U.S. State Department systems. This time, the charges stem from a botched effort to swipe and destroy government records immediately following their dismissal from contractor roles.
The Department of Justice announced on Thursday that the brothers, aged 34, tampered with databases and documents from three different government agencies. Both were employed as federal contractors at a company in Washington, D.C., which services 45 U.S. agencies. Prosecutors detailed that the siblings began coordinating the crimes just moments post-termination.
Using AI as a solution to cover their alleged misdeeds—what could possibly go wrong?
According to an indictment unsealed on Thursday, on February 18, the brothers were fired around 4:55 p.m. A mere five minutes later, they allegedly attempted to gain access to their former employer's system and subsequently to federal government databases. By that time, access for one brother had already been revoked. Nonetheless, the other brother reportedly managed to enter a government agency's database on the company's server, issuing commands to block others from the database and then deleted 96 databases filled with sensitive investigative files and Freedom of Information Act records.
Their poorly executed plan to obliterate and plunder data revealed their lack of expertise in evading detection in database logs. Thus, they allegedly turned to an AI chat tool, in an amateurish move, for assistance.
Within a minute of purging Department of Homeland Security databases, Muneep Akhter reportedly asked the AI tool, "how do I clear system logs from SQL servers after deleting databases". He then queried "how do you clear all event and application logs from Microsoft Windows Server 2012," according to the prosecutors.
Despite extensive details in the indictment of the databases erased and stolen information, it highlights how the Akhters' efforts to erase traces were futile. Whether their failure stemmed from receiving inadequate guidance from the AI tool or misimplementing the instructions remains uncertain. Prosecutors also disclosed obtaining records of the brothers discussing how to rid their homes of incriminating evidence. They allegedly erased their company-issued laptops' data by reinstalling the system three days later.