- May 4, 2019
- 827
When Saudi Arabia contacted security researcher Chris Kubecka to investigate an apparent intrusion into its Dutch embassy’s secured email accounts, she knew it was not going to be a simple case.
Local laws in the Hague did not apply, since the embassy is considered Saudi soil. And it only got more complicated after Kubecka got to work: Once the email account was secured, the attacker — who claimed ISIS affiliation — left a trail suggesting an insider was responsible and then threatened to kill hundreds of innocent people if certain demands weren’t met.
The escalations sent Kubecka, the Saudis, the Dutch and dozens of other diplomats scrambling on an international whodunnit — a hacking case that emphasized the high-stakes challenges and troublesome gray areas that come with securing diplomatic communications.
www.cyberscoop.com
Local laws in the Hague did not apply, since the embassy is considered Saudi soil. And it only got more complicated after Kubecka got to work: Once the email account was secured, the attacker — who claimed ISIS affiliation — left a trail suggesting an insider was responsible and then threatened to kill hundreds of innocent people if certain demands weren’t met.
The escalations sent Kubecka, the Saudis, the Dutch and dozens of other diplomats scrambling on an international whodunnit — a hacking case that emphasized the high-stakes challenges and troublesome gray areas that come with securing diplomatic communications.

Extortion and alleged ISIS threats: A Saudi embassy learned the hard way about email security
Security researcher Chris Kubecka knew that it might be a tough assignment to catch an intruder on the email system at Saudi Arabia's embassy in the Netherlands. But the story only got bigger once she got to work.
