Star Wars fan website uncovered as CIA espionage platform

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) created a secret network of websites, including one dedicated to the Star Wars movie saga, to communicate with its informants abroad. This clandestine infrastructure was discovered between 2010 and 2013 by counterintelligence services in countries such as Iran and China, leading to the arrest and execution of several of its collaborators in those countries.

In a recent report, cybersecurity researcher Ciro Santilli shows how, using free tools such as Wayback Machine and viewdns.info, he managed to map a large part of the domains and IP addresses of this network. Santilli started his research from a 2022 report by Reuters news agency, which revealed technical errors in the hidden sites, such as sequential IP addresses that made them easy to trace. It also relied on information from the Citizen Lab organization, which had identified 885 pages linked to the CIA, although that list was never published. His analysis made it possible to detect thematic portals ranging from extreme sports to music, many aimed at countries that are enemies of the United States, but also at allies such as Germany, France, Spain, Peru and Brazil.

Santilli notes that his work aims to document these facts from a critical perspective, with an emphasis on public transparency and ethical debate about secret intelligence operations. The findings offer insight into the global scope of the CIA's digital spying activities, and the associated human and strategic risks.