Major Classified Pentagon Documents Leak Tracked Through A Minecraft Discord Server
That makes Discord an extremely appealing avenue through which leakers and bad actors can exfiltrate data, which is apparently what happened earlier this year at the US Pentagon. According to the Wall Street Journal, top secret documents containing information about the war in Ukraine, the US's snooping on its allies, American intelligence on ISIS and China, and other sensitive topics were leaked through Discord.
It seems to be hard to overstate the magnitude of this leak. The Wall Street Journal describes it as "dozens" of documents, and Bellingcat seems to think that they were initially posted on a server known as "Thug Shaker Central" which has since been entirely deleted, rendering these claims impossible to verify.
Interestingly, while the Russian government believes that the documents are legit and show the extent of US and NATO involvement in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, Bellingcat reports that at least one Russian Telegram channel believes that the leak was intentional, and that the documents are "disinformation." That's some serious 4D chess counter-intelligence work if so, but anything is possible.
For its part, the Department of Defense told Bellingcat that it is "actively reviewing the matter, and has made a formal referral to the Department of Justice for investigation." We wouldn't be surprised if the end result of this incident is a ban for Discord on the devices of all DoD personnel.
