Pentagon leak traced to video game discord group discussing Ukraine

Open-source intelligence experts suggest that a significant collection of Pentagon leaks was first released on the Discord chat service, utilized by video game players, in an effort to resolve a discussion about the conflict in Ukraine.

Discord is a preferred chat program for gamers and non-censored individuals. On a server named “Minecraft Earth Map,” ten of the papers were released as early as March 4th, a month before they appeared on other servers.

The origin of the leak may appear surprising, but previous intelligence breaches have happened because of disputes between gaming communities, causing problems for both gamers and military systems.

Last week, the leaked cache leaked, including documents revealing projected casualties in the Bakhmut theater of combat, began circulating on social media networks. There were two copies of these documents that were observed by Ukraine war analysts; one had digital modifications to underreport Russian casualties and overestimate Ukrainian ones. The data had been disseminated in private Discord chatrooms before being made public on the internet.

“After an argument on the server about Minecraft Maps and the war in Ukraine, one of the Discord users replied: ‘Here, have some leaked documents’ – attaching 10 documents about Ukraine, some of which bore the ‘top secret’ markings,” said Aric Toler, an analyst at the research group Bellingcat.

The documents were uploaded to a different Discord server maintained by followers of the Filipino YouTuber “WowMao” three days before their leak on social media along with dozens of other unverified documents concerning Ukraine. Although they were not the source, the documents could have been posted on the server with the pseudonym “Thug Shaker Central” since mid-January.

“Posts and channel listings show that the server’s users were interested in video games, music, Orthodox religion, and fandom for the well-known military-themed YouTuber ‘Oxide’,” said Toler.

Despite the scale and sensitivity of the disclosures, this is not the first time when a gaming discussion led to intelligence breach. “War Thunder,” a vehicular combat multiplayer video game, is infamous for having a variety of leaks associated with it.

With almost 70 million users, there are frequently battles regarding the game’s accuracy and balance. As a result, users have broken the game’s rules at least ten times since 2020 by posting classified documents concerning the effectiveness of active weaponry to argue for improvements to the vehicle’s digital version to make it more accurate.

For example, during an online debate over the speed of the turret rotation on the French Leclerc tank, classified design information regarding the tank was posted by arguing Discord users in October 2021. A person posing as a tank commander in the British army then leaked documents on the vehicle’s armor structure in July 2021. In January of this year, four other individuals also shared design documents for at least five various fighter jets. The game has become a shorthand expression for intelligence agency oversight, requiring military contractor Raytheon to dismiss reports about the entanglement of the game in their security clearance process.

“We always delete posts containing classified or restricted information from our forum as soon as possible. We forbid our users to share documents like this on our platforms. We remind our users again and again that it’s both illegal and pointless, so they should never do that,” said Anton Yudintsev, the founder of Hungarian developer Gaijin Entertainment.

“We never use them in our work and that policy will never change. The development team does not even look at the contents of the documents, moderators just check if the information on the military vehicle or armament in question is still classified or not. If the answer is a yes, we delete everything ASAP,” continued Yudintsev.

Intelligence agencies have long been aware of the need to monitor gaming communities. The National Security Agency (NSA) was actively monitoring Xbox Live, Microsoft’s voice chat program, and has even sent operatives into the virtual setting of Azeroth, the foundation of the World of Warcraft video game series. Edward Snowden’s 2013 document leak provided this information to the public.

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