The CIA used a Star Wars fan website to secretly communicate with spies

Through the looking glass: The internet has seen its fair share of weird, but a Star Wars fan site secretly run by the CIA to communicate with overseas spies might top the list. StarWarsWeb.net looked like any other 2010-era fan page, complete with lightsabers, Yoda quotes ("Like these games you will"), LEGO ads, and hyped-up mentions of games like Battlefront 2 and The Force Unleashed II. But behind that nostalgic facade was a covert login system. If you entered the right password into the search bar, you'd unlock a secure line to CIA handlers. Or at least, that was the plan. This bizarre piece of intel comes courtesy of Ciro Santilli, an independent researcher with a knack for rooting around the dusty corners of the web, who spoke to 404media. Santili took it upon himself to dig deeper after a Reuters uncovering piece titled "America's Throwaway Spies" revealed a handful of suspicious domains back in 2022. Armed with little more than open-source tools, web dev know-how, and apparen ... Read full article.