pilfer ˈpil-fər verb
: steal or make off with belongings of others
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The word pilfer has appeared in 56 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Jan. 25 in “Huge Trove of Leaked Russian Documents Is Published by Transparency Advocates” by Scott Shane:
A group of transparency advocates on Friday posted a mammoth collection of hacked and leaked documents from inside Russia, a release widely viewed as a sort of symbolic counterstrike against Russia’s dissemination of hacked emails to influence the American presidential election in 2016.
… Russian and Eastern European hackers have for many years been among the world’s most active, many operating, initially, from a criminal underground in search of profit. But over the last decade, Russian intelligence agencies have become adept at using cyberintrusions to pilfer documents abroad as part of intelligence gathering and to leak for political purposes.
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