On Joshua Schulte’s Alleged Substantial Amount of CSAM … and Other Contraband

Yesterday, Judge Jesse Furman docketed a letter, impossibly dated March 23, updating him on the investigation into the Child Sexual Abuse Material allegedly found on WikiLeaks Vault 7 source, Josh Schulte’s discovery computer, six months ago (see this post for an explanation).

It described more about the CSAM material found on Schulte’s computer: The FBI had found “at least approximately 2,400 files on the laptop … likely containing CSAM.”

With respect to assertions that Joshua Schulte, the defendant, has made about the discovery laptop—that the laptop does not contain CSAM, that any CSAM appears only in thumbnails, or that the CSAM was maliciously or inadvertently loaded onto the laptop by the Government. See, e.g., D.E. 998 at 3 (pro se letter to the Court dated Dec. 21, 2022), 5 (pro se letter to the Court dated Jan. 5, 2023)—the Government is able to confirm the following: at least approximately 2,400 files on the laptop have been identified to date as likely containing CSAM. Those files include full images, and are not limited to thumbnail images. Moreover, the Government did not copy discovery materials onto the defendant’s laptop. In 2021, former defense counsel copied discovery and trial materials onto the laptop, which was then reviewed by personnel from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for security compliance before making a file index and providing the laptop to the Metropolitan Correctional Center (“MCC”), where the defendant was then in custody. The CSAM on the laptop was not provided by the Government or the result of Government action.

That, by itself, doesn’t tell us a lot more than we learned in an October filing, which explained that the FBI had found, “a substantial amount” of suspected CSAM.

Indeed, the letter focuses on debunking two counterarguments Schulte has made since, which is one of the reasons Furman docketed it after DOJ submitted it ex parte: “[T]his letter responds directly to assertions by Mr. Schulte,” Furman observed.

The government was debunking a claim made by Schulte that the government had caused the CSAM — but only thumbnails — to be loaded onto his discovery computer by “connect[ing] a child pornography drive to the laptop during setup.”

Schulte repeated and expanded — at great, great length — that theory in a set of filings dated March 1 but just loaded to the docket today.

The government response, effectively, was that they made an index of the files as the computer existed when it was turned over to MCC in 2021, calling Schulte on his claim that he was framed with CSAM.

Ultimately both sides will be able to present their claims to a jury.

But there are several other reasons I’m interested in the letter and related issues.

The government’s working theory when they first revealed this last fall, was that Schulte got a thumb drive into the SCIF and from that accessed the CSAM allegedly found on his home computer six years ago, presumably just to have it in his cell for his own further exploitation of children.

there is reason to believe that the defendant may have misused his access to the SCIF, including by connecting one or more unauthorized devices to the laptop used by the defendant to access the CSAM previously produced.

That’s because in August, they found a thumb drive attached to the SCIF laptop.

On or about August 26, 2022, Schulte was produced to the Courthouse SCIF and, during that visit, asked to view the hard drive containing the Home CSAM Files from the Home Desktop. The hard drive was provided to Schulte and afterwards re-secured in the dedicated safe in the SCIF. The FBI advised the undersigned that, while securing the hard drive containing the Home CSAM Files, they observed that an unauthorized thumb drive (the “Thumb Drive”) was connected to the SCIF laptop used by Schulte and his counsel to review that hard drive containing the Home CSAM Files. On or about September 8, 2022, at the Government’s request, the CISO retrieved the hard drive containing materials from the Home Desktop from the SCIF and returned it to the FBI so that it could be handled pursuant to the normal procedures applicable to child sexual abuse materials. The CISO inquired about what should be done with the Thumb Drive, which remained in the dedicated SCIF safe.

But in a little noticed development, during the period when FBI has been investigating how a defendant held under SAMs managed to get (we’re now told) 2,400 CSAM files onto his discovery computer, CNN reported that the network of FBI’s NY Field Office focused on CSAM had been targeted in a hacking attempt.

The FBI has been investigating and working to contain a malicious cyber incident on part of its computer network in recent days, according to people briefed on the matter.

FBI officials believe the incident involved an FBI computer system used in investigations of images of child sexual exploitation, two sources briefed on the matter told CNN.

“The FBI is aware of the incident and is working to gain additional information,” the bureau said in a statement to CNN. “This is an isolated incident that has been contained. As this is an ongoing investigation the FBI does not have further comment to provide at this time.”

FBI officials have worked to isolate the malicious cyber activity, which two of the sources said involved the FBI New York Field Office — one of the bureau’s biggest and highest profile offices. The origin of the hacking incident is still being investigated, according to one source.

DOJ still insists that former CIA hacker Josh Schulte found a way to access a whole bunch of CSAM. And in the same period, reportedly, the servers involved with CSAM investigation in the NYFO were hacked.

And while the letter released yesterday doesn’t tell us — much — that’s new about what Schulte allegedly had on his laptop, it does tell us, by elimination, which of the sealed filings in his docket are not related to the CSAM investigation.

Since the October update on the investigation into Schulte, sealed documents have been filed in Schulte’s docket on the following days:

  • December 15: Sealed document
  • January 19: Ex parte update on CSAM investigation
  • January 26: Sealed document
  • March 9: Sealed document
  • March 13: Sealed document

Only the January 19 letter — along with yesterday’s letter — have been unsealed. That, plus the flurry of filings in September and October, are it for the CSAM investigation. There’s something else going on in this docket, four sealed documents worth.

Indeed, in those very long set of filings mentioned above, both dated February and finalized March 1, both docketed today, Schulte alluded to something beyond CSAM.

Judge Furman has begun claiming that there are other vague misuses or misbehavior on the laptop.

He must not have read the September and October letters very closely, because they describe there was a warrant that preceded the discovery of the CSAM.

The warrants that we know of include the following:

Since late September, this investigation was about the “substantive” amounts of CSAM found on a computer possessed by Schulte.

But before that it was based on suspicions of contraband.

That stems, in significant part, from a search of the computer DOJ did in June, when Schulte turned it over claiming it had been dropped.

It hadn’t been dropped. It needed to be charged. Indeed, in the interminable motions filed today, Schulte treated plugging in a laptop as some kind of due process violation.

Plugging in a laptop should in no way compromise the privacy of a laptop. But it did raise real questions about the excuse Schulte offered in an attempt to get a second laptop (one he effectively got once trial started anyway).

Needless to say, his description of what happened with the BIOS password differs from the government’s, as provided last June.

First, with respect to the defendant’s discovery laptop, which he reported to be inoperable as of June 1, 2022 (D.E. 838), the laptop was operational and returned to Mr. Schulte by the end of the day on June 3, 2022. Mr. Schulte brought the laptop to the courthouse on the morning of June 3 and it was provided to the U.S. Attorney’s Office information technology staff in the early afternoon. It appears that the laptop’s charger was not working and, after being charged with one of the Office’s power cords, the laptop could be turned on and booted. IT staff discovered, however, that the user login for the laptop BIOS1 had been changed. IT staff was able to log in to the laptop using an administrator BIOS account and a Windows login password provided by the defendant. IT staff also discovery an encrypted 15-gigabyte partition on the defendant’s hard drive. The laptop was returned to Mr. Schulte, who confirmed that he was able to log in to the laptop and access his files, along with a replacement power cord. Mr. Schulte was admonished about electronic security requirements, that he is not permitted to enable or use any wireless capabilities on the laptop, and that attempting to do so may result in the laptop being confiscated and other consequences. Mr. Schulte returned to the MDC with the laptop. [my emphasis]

Here’s more background on all the funky things that happened with this laptop that led me to suspect something was going on last summer.

Anyway, the government claims it found a whole bunch of CSAM on Schulte’s computer. But there’s also something else going on.

We may find out reasonably soon. The impossibly dated filing from this week promised an update in a week, which (if the impossibly dated filing was actually dated March 21) might be Tuesday.

The Government expects to provide the Court with a supplemental status letter in approximately one week.

At the same time that CIA hacker Josh Schulte was allegedly finding a way to load CSAM onto his discovery laptop, the local FBI office’s CSAM servers were hacked.

That might be a crazy coincidence.

Update: DOJ filed an ex parte update today, which may or may not have to do with the CSAM investigation.

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20 replies
  1. John Kettering says:

    IT of 17 years guy here. Regardless of what he’s claiming, powering on a laptop cannot reveal any information. At most, it it were a managed device it could be locked. There are no corporate tools that allow the simple activation of a laptop to cause insertion of false data. Technically that is not possible. That’s why we have time stamps and auditing tools. Even if it were a personal machine, nothing that exists would allow you to fake data being there that was not. Every time a machine touches the cloud there is proof of when and what happened that occurs outside of the control of a government agency or a an independant malicious actor. This guy is banking very unfortunately for him that the FBI does not understand forensic computer science.

    • John Paul Jones says:

      “Every time a machine touches the cloud there is proof of when and what happened that occurs outside of the control of a government agency or a an independant malicious actor.”

      Would it be possible for him to write a routine which would hide or eliminate those traces?

      • LizzyMom says:

        Might possibly “hide” something from his laptop’s point of view, but very extremely doubtful if it would be able to “fool” the cloud, which has its own internal tracking date/time/etc info logs…

        • viget says:

          I’m concerned the trojan horse might’ve been the hard drive, not the laptop. If he somehow smuggled a USB drive into a SCIF, he might’ve used that to put malicious code on the CSAM hard drive, disguised as other CSAM material. Then, when the FBI brought it back to their cyberlab to forensically analyze it, they could’ve infected their systems.

          We are all assuming the USB drive was used to smuggle SCIF material *out* to his discovery computer. What if it was to smuggle stuff in to the SCIF?

          Another possibility is that it could’ve been a bipartite attack, where the payload was hidden in the CSAM material, and the triggering executable was hidden on his discovery laptop. So the attack wasn’t triggered until the FBI brought the discovery laptop back to analyze (tho the documents above mention it went to the US Atty’s IT folks, not FBI???). Not sure if that was done on purpose to avoid infecting FBI cyber, or it was just standard process.

        • emptywheel says:

          I think it’s also possible he attempted to download CSAM from the FBI servers to load onto his discovery laptop, to sustain a claim that it was planted. Which is what he has been arguing from the start.

        • viget says:

          Very well could be. I, of course, always gravitate to worst case scenarios. Schulte is a dangerous dude.

        • algebraist says:

          I’m not convinced this could even be a thing. The three letter agencies don’t cross connect their systems in such a way (in fact that’s the project Snowdon claimed to be working on in his book), and they love not sharing with each other.

          It’s far more likely he’s just a slimebag.

    • rip no longer says:

      If the laptop was powered on while an external USB (thumbdrive) was connected then it is possible that the laptop booted up initially with a boot image on the thumbdrive. At that point anything is possible.

      Another similar scenario is the use of a USB malicious driver embedded in the firmware on the USB (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BadUSB) which can allow the USB to send commands to the laptop’s OS. There are no protections against BadUSB and, AFAIK, it is undetectable by any current security tools.

    • algebraist says:

      Long time reader, first time poster. Also an IT guy with more years IT experience than I care to count.

      I agree with John Kettering that powering on a laptop does not necessarily possible to access and modify data. That comes from direct access to the hard drive, sometimes through the OS and other times through direct forensic examination of the drive after it’s been extracted from the laptop. Such forensic tools are designed to be read only, and even mount the filesystem in a read only fashion to preserve evidence.

      If you want an example from the Defcon conference on this kind of thing (and how claims can be made up out of thin air), i’ll direct you to the last part of this talk: https://youtu.be/NG9Cg_vBKOg?t=2356

      BIOS password changed. Well BIOS doesn’t give file access to the drives, and there are tools such as Dell Client Configuration Utility that system admins can change settings on. My redacted workplace does exactly this.

      “encrypted 15-gigabyte partition” … means nothing without context. Is this something that the IT admins did as part of their normal duties (aka Windows Bitlocker) or is this something else like VeraCrypt which would look far far worse. Not enough details to make judgement but I will say it doesn’t look good.

      If this device contains potentially classified information and projects, why isn’t this being hidden from the public record? Surely they’d want some skilled and security cleared people looking at this … no offense to DA IT staff but people who specialise in this kind of thing. Again, see Defcon link above.

      I’ll let the actual attorney’s decide if this is enough room to wiggle out of.

  2. Bad Boris says:

    Given it’s Schulte, coincidence would be my last thought.

    [Welcome back to emptywheel. SECOND NOTICE: Please use the same username each time you comment so that community members get to know you. This time you used “Bad Bart” though you have used “Bad Boris” for your previous 12 comments. It has been edited this one time; next time it may not clear. Thanks. /~Rayne]

  3. viget says:

    Generally I don’t believe in coincidence. Maybe it’s that drive in me to always look for a “unifying diagnosis.”

    But I’d wager the CSAM is more than it seems. Great place to hide malicious code…it has the perfect built-in shiny object excuse. And most decent people don’t want to look too closely at it. I hope the FBI’s top steganography experts are on this case…

    And I sincerely hope they quarantined that SCIF laptop and thumb drive after he connected it to the hard drive, and used a air-gapped forensic computer to analyze all that stuff.

  4. Tech Support says:

    Seems like Joshua lives in a beautiful world of his own design where pwning FBI systems from jail is totally rational.

  5. esqTJE@23 says:

    Ummmmmmm. I’m admittedly not the best reader, so perhaps this has been said.

    There is no way on the planet that the drained laptop battery and “non working” power chord were not INTENTIONALLY set up this way. Once he figured out how to hack into DOJ’s system and plant a ‘virus’ or ‘disruptive-event’ using only the laptop he was issued and any thumb drives he might have had malicious code stored on… and wrote the offending code himself, he wrapped up the sinister plot by placing the disease vector on the laptop, draining its battery, and disabling the power chord by damaging it in some way. One could certainly call this speculation on my part, but if you live and work among “criminals” you get to peak into the “criminal mind” every now and then.

    Handing the Gov’t BACK its laptop was the vector path he chose in advance to 1) cause problems at the site where the laptop was troubleshot at DOJ or 2) to reverse engineer “the FBI evidence plant” OR BOTH. And yes, please tell me this is why the laptop was troubleshot at a different location and that the Gov’t was adequately prepared for this.

    AND question for the techies: because many newer laptops are powered with a USB-C cable, and that junction both allows electrical power AND DATA TRANSFER, and even some power chords or chargers have computer memory / data chips in them, is it too far a stretch to think this guy could figure out a way to exploit this? My brain is not smart enough to see how he could manage the direction of the transfer, but would this be impossible? (techies, pls reply)

    If this story were not for real, I’d have thought it was the antagonist plot device in a James Bond or Mission Impossible movie. Beyond real!

  6. earthworm says:

    i am so unsavvy that i ask for forgiveness for asking a clueless question:
    what is the difference between means of how it could’ve gotten there with respect to material on schulte and biden hard drives?
    and does it raise issues about chain of custody in both cases?

    earthworm

    • Rayne says:

      These two topics and the technology involved are so wholly unrelated it’s like asking about similarities between computers owned at either end of the continent by two wholly unrelated people.

      There’s the possibility of misinformation and disinformation conflating these two things.

    • bmaz says:

      Lol, there is no cognizable chain of custody on Biden’s “laptop”, it is pretty much a dead letter in any court. As to Schulte, Marcy would have to answer that.

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