On Wednesday, Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher wrote a piece on Intercept about how NSA was seeking to expand their ability to hack into computers and networks around the world. Ever since then, the NSA has been crying the blues about how Intercept had inaccurately reported the story. However, today, Gallagher did another post showing documents that contradict NSA's denials.
As posted, one of the documents discusses QUANTUMTHEORY (QT).
Briefly, when Quantum is tipped that a target is using Facebook, Quantum pretends to be the Facebook server and sends a response to the target. This fake response contains a link to TAO's FOXACID server, which implants the target's computer.
Now, compare NSA's denials that it is impersonating Facebook with reality:
It is difficult to square the NSA secretly saying that it “pretends to be the Facebook server” while publicly claiming that it “does not use its technical capabilities to impersonate U.S. company websites.” Is the agency making a devious and unstated distinction in its denial between “websites” and “servers”? Was it deliberate that the agency used the present tense “does not” in its denial as opposed to the past tense “did not”? Has the Facebook QUANTUMHAND technique been shut down since our report? Either way, the language used in the NSA’s public statement seems highly misleading – which is why several tech writers have rightly treated it with skepticism.
And while NSA does not currently infect millions of computers, it has built the capacity to do so.
Again, we reported exactly what the NSA’s own documents say: that the NSA is working to “aggressively scale” its computer hacking missions and has built a system called TURBINE that it explicitly states will “allow the current implant network to scale to large size (millions of implants).” Only a decade ago, the number of implants deployed by the NSA was in the hundreds, according to the Snowden files. But the agency now reportedly manages a network of between 85,000 and 100,000 implants in computers systems worldwide – and, if TURBINE’s capabilities and the NSA’s own documents are anything to go by, it is intent on substantially increasing those numbers.
In 2011, the US conducted
231 different offensive operations.
U.S. intelligence services carried out 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011, the leading edge of a clandestine campaign that embraces the Internet as a theater of spying, sabotage and war, according to top-secret documents obtained by The Washington Post.
That disclosure, in a classified intelligence budget provided by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, provides new evidence that the Obama administration’s growing ranks of cyberwarriors infiltrate and disrupt foreign computer networks.
The Post links to a secret black budget that is used to pay for these operations. Expect this number to increase tenfold if the NSA gets its way. And expect other entities, both foreign governments and corporate, to create their own bugs in response, which could result in a massive increase in computer attacks, straining even the best security software.
NRC (Netherlands) estimates that there were 50,000 infected computer networks and 1,000 dedicated hackers hired by the NSA in order to spy on people. And foreign governments are already seeking to create their own spy systems.
The Dutch intelligence services - AIVD and MIVD – have displayed interest in hacking. The Joint Sigint Cyber Unit – JSCU – was created early in 2013. The JSCU is an inter-agency unit drawing on experts with a range of IT skills. This new unit is prohibited by law from performing the type of operations carried out by the NSA as Dutch law does not allow this type of internet searches.
We know that the NSA has seriously undermined our relations with Germany right at a time when we need international cooperation in light of Russia's belligerence in Ukraine.
Techdirt discusses how NSA has undermined our relationship with France.
Clapper winds things up by telling readers France and America are still best friends and, somewhat chillingly, "we will continue to cooperate on security and intelligence matters going forward." I know this is probably meant to sound like a cheery "we'll give you a head's up if we need your citizens' phone data," but given the cozy relationship the NSA has with the UK's GCHQ and others, it sounds more like "we'll show you ours if you'll show us yours." Nations cooperating on security matters seems like a good idea, but when a government begins sharing the unfiltered results of its domestic surveillance with foreign nations while requiring little more than a "gentleman's agreement" that the data won't be abused, it's time to start worrying again.
Did Putin feel like he could act in Ukraine with impunity because he felt that we were so divided with our allies over NSA that the West could not generate a coherent response?