From a September 12, 2012, post by The Mittani, a member of the Goonswarm alliance in the role-playing game Eve Online, on a website that provides news about the fictional world of the game. Vile Rat was the alias used in the game by Sean Smith, a State Department official killed in the September 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

We knew that Vile Rat was in Benghazi; he told us. He was in situ to provide IT services for the consulate, which meant he was on the Net all the time, hanging out with us…