Akamai employee tried to sell secrets to Israel
A 43-year-old former Akamai employee has pleaded guilty to espionage charges after offering to hand over confidential information about the Web acceleration company to an agent posing as an Israeli consular official in Boston.
Starting in September 2007, Elliot Doxer played an elaborate 18-month-long game of cloak-and-dagger with James Cromer, a man he thought was an Israeli intelligence officer. He handed over pages and pages of confidential data to Cromer, providing a list of Akamai's clients and contracts, information about the company's security practices, and even a list of 1,300 Akamai employees, including mobile numbers, departments and e-mail addresses.
Doxer delivered the information to a dead drop box, a predetermined location set up by Cromer where both of them could drop off documents for each other without actually meeting. His motivation was to help Israel and to get information on his son and estranged wife, who lived outside the U.S., prosecutors said in court filings.
