The CIA even messes up when it wants to recruit Russians

A technical error on

The problem started when the link ' https://t.me/securelycontactingcia ' was automatically shortened to ' https://t.me/securelycont .' X automatically shortens the URL to save character space or to track how many times a link has been clicked.

Because the shortened channel name appeared on CIA X account, people who clicked on the link were redirected to the non-CIA channel. The 'securelycont' channel was unused and, at that time, unclaimed .

This means that it could be claimed by anyone and secret information intended for the CIA could be forwarded to this duplicate channel. Indeed, it seemed logical that the Russian internal security forces themselves could very well have taken over the canal. This was a serious security problem and was first noticed by ethical hacker Kevin McSheehan , who was surprised that the CIA hadn't noticed. Among other things, the channel now seems active, even if with very few subscribers.

The ethical hacker discovered the mistake by accident “The CIA really made a misstep. My immediate thought was panic,” McSheehan told the BBC. “I noticed that the official Telegram link they were sharing could be hijacked – and my biggest fear was that a country like Russia, China or North Korea could easily intercept Western intelligence.”

McSheehan explained in a post that he had been engaged in an anti-deep fake project when he accidentally stumbled upon the CIA's X account, which has over 3.4 million followers worldwide, and noticed the mistake.

McSheehan, under the pseudonym @123456, said that the CIA is the most competent acronym in the United States and that “it was mostly @x's mistake, not the CIA's.”

CIA Recruitment of Russian Spies The CIA's Telegram page states: “Our global mission requires that individuals can contact the CIA securely anywhere.” This is a message specifically aimed at recruiting spy agents from Russia.

The CIA announced in a press release dated May 16, 2023 that it has launched a Telegram channel to encourage Russians to share information securely with the agency.

In a YouTube video from May 2, 2022, the CIA provided instructions in Russian “on how those who feel coerced by the Russian government's unjust war can safely contact the CIA.” “Our global mission requires that individuals can contact the CIA securely anywhere.”

The agency added a link to Tor, software that hides a user's IP address and browsing activity by redirecting web traffic through a number of different routers. The Tor browser allows users to access the dark web. While the dark web is the home ground for many illicit and illegal activities, it is also a source for the transfer of information from countries with strict internet censorship.