A confusing truth is becoming increasingly clear: The government had multiple chances to stop Edward Snowden before he leaked a trove of NSA documents earlier this year. But they didn’t. We’ve heard about the warning signs before, but the latest revelation is a real whopper.
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We’ve long suspected that the NSA, the world’s premiere spy agency, was pretty good at breaking into computers. But now, thanks to an article by security expert Bruce Schneier—who is working with the Guardian to go through the Snowden documents—we have a much more detailed view of how the NSA uses exploits in order to infect the computers of targeted users. The template for attacking people with malware used by the NSA is in widespread use by criminals and fraudsters, as well as foreign intelligence agencies, so it’s important to understand and defend against this threat to avoid being a victim to the plethora of attackers out there.
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This is embarrassingly funny. The WSJ reports that the NSA’s new Utah data center has suffered 10 meltdowns in the past 13 months because of electrical surges. The NSA is basically using so much power in its spying efforts that it is poetically killing its data centers. Seriously, the surges have destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars in machinery.
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So, you know how the federal government all shut down because Congress failed to come up with a budget to pay the employees? Well, the members of the special committee set up to investigate the intelligence community just threw in the towel, too. But they weren’t even getting paid in the first place.
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The US National Security Agency is working to undermine the security of Tor, the open-source internet anonymity tool, using targeted Firefox hacks and keyloggers in a – so-far believed to be unsuccessful – attempt to peel open the clandestine system. Leaked NSA documents, including presentations titled “Tor Stinks”, were among the cache of information leaked […]
This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, but the NSA has reportedly been trying (and failing) to break into the Tor network for years. It turns out that Tor, a suite of tools to protect anonymity online, is just too secure as an infrastructure. Individual users, however, are less secure.
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The NSA reportedly conducted a test “pilot project” that involved the use of collecting bulk data and using it to identify the location of cellphones located in the United States. The government agency elected not to use the program for the time being, but could do so under a Patriot Act provision, Section 215, a […]
Lavabit, the encrypted email provider of choice used by Edward Snowden, spontaneously closed its doors this past summer, doing so for vague reasons related to the government, though the service’s owner was (and is) under gag order, keeping things quiet. Last month, a request to have some of the documents unsealed was submitted, which would […]
New details have emerged in the saga of Lavabit, the now offline secure email provider used by Edward Snowden. Apparently, the government tried (and failed) to strong arm the service into giving up its private SSL key, a major security concession that would’ve given Uncle Sam access to all user data.
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The NSA’s been rather busy over the past few years, tracking everything from your emails to phone calls, and now the New York Times is reporting that it even conducted a secret project to collect data about the location of American’s cellphones in 2010 and 2011. The project was ultimately not implemented and only recently surfaced in a pre-written answer for the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper, should the subject come up in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. According to the Times, details about the project are scarce, and Senator Ron Wyden said that “the real story” behind the project has yet to be declassified. The answer obtained by the paper reads:
“In 2010 and 2011 N.S.A. received samples in order to test the ability of its systems to handle the data format, but that data was not used for any other purpose and was never available for intelligence analysis purposes.”
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Source: New York Times
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