Former NRC Employee Sentenced for Attempted E-Mail Attack

A former employee of the Energy Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was sentenced to prison for an attempted e-mail “spear-phishing” attack on DOE employee e-mail accounts.

Charles Harvey Eccleston was sentenced to serve 18 months in prison, the Justice Department said in an April 11 statement. Eccleston had pleaded guilty in February 2016 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to one count of attempted unauthorized access and intentional damage to a protected computer.

A spear-phishing attack involves sending an e-mail that appears to be from a trusted source but that infects the recipient’s computer ...