NSA, every bug hole - Computer Point

Innovation and tradition in the practice of intelligence: they are part of the strategies parcels intercepted before being delivered, hardware and software to inoculate machines targets. But also the collection of metadata is vital

Rome – not only technologically advanced tools: a dense network of tecnocontrollo that NSA has woven in the name of national security ststunitense also lives of old techniques and well tested. Der Spiegel , offering a glimpse of the new confidential documents, paints a picture of the activities of the division Tailored Access Operations (TAO), described as a team of artisans of digital, which does not hesitate to resort to the interception of shipments of computer equipment to inoculate the most updated technology to offer on the subject of bed bugs.

Plumbers and carpenters, so they desrive the German newspaper: WHO ARE hard in strength to the team Tailored Access Operations (TAO), whose work has already nurtured many of the revelations of Datagate. Der Spiegel , by analyzing two documents that you do not credit the source says of the operations of the unit, as the division was born with the advent of the Internet and grew with the recruitment of young technology enthusiasts of how agents can be compared to craftsmen working in call, a sort of emergency that knows how to gain access to information that the other divisions of intelligence fail to nab. From counter espionage traditional supported by other intelligence agencies in the U.S., through the operations of cyberwar, often carried out by exploiting the vulnerabilities of the IT industry to monitor the communications of the world leaders: the examples cited by the German newspaper run lightly from the network ( de) encrypted BlackBerry Huawei equipment of the same on the origin of the Chinese States have tried to thicken the suspects, from generic outline the exploitation of bugs in Cisco equipment (to which the company has already responded with a statement) to the detailed description of how the crash reports sent to the machines running Microsoft software being intercepted and are useful to reveal flaws that creep in, with the help of software like the aforementioned X-Keyscore.

Der Spiegel , as well as draw attention to the espionage mediated by the infrastructure backbone, it also offers a new description of the tools that fall under the classification of QUANTUM exploited by the British GCHQ and NSA, particularly effective for profiling and monitoring users of services like Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter and YouTube (but not for other Google services), and they seem to be based on the creation of a network infrastructure parallel and intersected with that of the Internet, able to fool machines and users to auscultate communications of many subjects, from those entrusted to the provider Belgacom and those of the oil OPEC.

Many of these operations would be the task of the team that lies beneath the mysterious acronym ANT, probably part of the wider Tailored Access Operations, specializing in the creation of tools to break into even more complex systems. A witness to the words of Der Spiegel , a 50-page document that would constitute a kind of sample of products dedicated to espionage that involves what is called “graft” of software or dedicated hardware: from expensive radio stations useful basis to intercept telephone communications, to USB sticks that disseminate malware, acting via software at the BIOS level and software capable of attacking the firmware doi branded hard drives Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor and Samsung. All the companies named in the article by Der Spiegel declare unrelated to any cooperation with the NSA.

But all the flaws, from technological to logistics, are joints in which the magmatic operations tecnocontrollo you know infiltrate: to develop parallel networks, to creep in infrastructure, NSA also relies on well-established and conventional strategies. Der Spiegel cites’ intercept of parcels and shipments of material technology , appropriately filled with malware or ad hoc hardware before being repackaged and delivered to the intended recipient. U.S. intelligence says the German newspaper reporting extracts of the documents that he got to see, believes that this method is “one of the most effective” to get access to the networks “throughout the world.”

But it is not the only underground espionage fill the folders of digital information U.S. intelligence: even the traditional collection of metadata relating to telephone conversations, legitimized by the anti-terrorism laws that have passed since the terrorist attacks of 2001, in viewfinder of citizens and activists, who believe the practice far too invasive. It is not of the same opinion, the New York judge William H. Pauley. It matters little that the amount of data has now reached colossal volumes and unmanageable, it does not matter that the data is anonymous but allow rapid identification, it does not matter that a court of Washington has recently raised doubts about the unconstitutionality of the practice: the collection of metadata telephone conversations, according to the court Pauley, would have helped thwart terrorist attacks of September 11.

Gaia Bottà