The CIA has set up a website for top secret messaging with informants that are too easy to access. Credit: ShutterStock
Imagine browsing the Star Wars fan website last week. It was a clever cover of the Covert CIA message, just to learn about the far-flung Galaxy. Independent researcher Ciro Santilli recently revealed it Starwarsweb.neta nostalgic early 2010s fan site with lightsaber ads and Yoda quotes, actually operates as a hidden portal for CIA agents to communicate with overseas sources. Click now to see where it leads.
It wasn’t the only one. Santilli has discovered a network of over 350 websites, ranging from Brazilian music forums to extreme sports portals. Independent media Website.
A simple search phrase triggered a secure login to the handler. Behind all the Lego-studded pages and game reviews there was a hidden spy line lurking. According to Go to Gamespotevidence suggests that this effort is also very troublesome, and can destroy agency efforts, contributing to the exposure of several CIA sources.
This is the glitter of the spy network
Several research centres and the media have documented the incident. It has been reported recently. “However, up until now, the true scope of this infrastructure has remained unknown. This gap is being addressed by Santilli using only free tools to successfully map secret networks,” Wired added.
The plan was unraveled after Iranian authorities stumbled on the plan. They deciphered one site and traced the other sites through consecutive IP addresses and code similarities. However, the outcome was serious. More than 30 CIA informants from Iran and China were reportedly exposed and carried out between 2011 and 2012.
Reuters first flagged the secret operation in 2022 Report“American Disposable Spies”, identify suspicious domains such as these fan sites. In that detailed article, Reuters documented the story of Gholamreza Hosseini, an Iranian industrial engineer who works for the CIA at Nabbed at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport in late 2010. Hoseini was beaten.
He denied everything and thought he managed to destroy all the crime data. Still, Iranian intelligence officials seem to know all that, and all he could think of was the CIA betrayal. “These are things I’ve never told anyone in the world,” Hosenei told Reuters. The CIA declined to comment on Hosseini’s account.
Lack of incompetence or severity in the CIA
Reuters said Joseyny was sacrificed because of the CIA’s incompetence in taking information provider security seriously.
The CIA has created over 350 websites, including the Star Wars fan sites mentioned by 404 Media.
“The hundreds of websites mass-produced by the CIA, rather than customized high-end spycraft, were rudimentary sites. We are dedicated to topics such as Beauty, Fitness, Entertainment and more.” said the CIA analyst. Reuters.
Each fake website was assigned to only one spy To limit the exposure of the entire network if a single agent is captured, two former CIA officials told Reuters.
Santilli’s detective work checks the scale. There are many front-end sites, many with localized content in France, Spain, Germany, Brazil, and more, and are designed to blend in with a niche audience.
The biggest CIA technology failure
High-tech analysts describe it as one of the CIA’s biggest high-tech brands. A platform that runs the same code with a sequential IP address made it easy to choose for digital slumbering.
The revelation emerged from Wayback Machine Archives and DNS pattern analysis. This highlights how human error can undermine top-tier intelligence.
This forensic discovery did not end with embarrassment – it ended life. when Intelligence Institutions like Iran and China have broken codes, informants are rounded up, arrested, and even worse.
What was meant to be an elegant online safe house has turned into a fatal weakness. “The CIA really failed.“ Bill Marcak of the University of Toronto Civic Studies Institute told Reuters. The secret messaging system “protrudes like a painful thumb.“
Even now, years later, the remains of that digital cloak and dagger operation remain online. visit Starwarsweb.net Today you will be re-routed to the CIA website. But digging into archived snapshots gives us a glimpse into the next mistake, the image of the Jedi and the sad aftermath of the secret miscalculation.
Security experts warn that this story holds a bigger lesson Intelligence Spycraft in the digital age. CIA fansite Gambit once placed agents in the crowd, but it looked like a normal, fun, deadly exposure. The developer may have hidden the portal, but they were unable to hide the patterns that emerged from it.
