Hungry CIA contractors stole more than $3,000 in snacks by hacking vending machines

A number of CIA contractors were fired after stealing $3,324.40 worth of vending machine snacks between the fall of 2012 and the spring of 2013, BuzzFeed News reports.

The contractors were taught how to fool the office's vending machines into giving them free snacks by one particular employee who stewed up the plan using "his knowledge of computer networks," a declassified report from the Office of Inspector General revealed. BuzzFeed News writes that the "hack" involved "unplugging a cable connecting the machines to an electronic payment system called FreedomPay, and then using 'unfunded FreedomPay cards' to buy the snacks at no cost." (Don't even think about it).

Unfortunately for the hungry contractors, "video footage recovered from the surveillance cameras captured numerous perpetrators engaged in the FreedomPay theft scheme, all of whom were readily identifiable as agency contract personnel," the report said.

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For a bit of perspective: Assuming a bag of chips at the CIA offices costs around 50 cents, the contractors apparently made off with the equivalent of 6,648 bags of Doritos.