NSA team spies, hacks to gather intelligence on targets, report says
By Dugald McConnell and Brian Todd
A top-secret National Security Agency team uses spyware and hacking to gather intelligence on targets, according to a new report based on internal agency documents.
According to Der Spiegel, a German magazine that published some of the documents, the unit's interception techniques are worthy of James Bond: intercepting a computer being shipped to a target and installing spyware before it is delivered; supplying an altered monitor cable that transmits everything on a computer's screen to the NSA; or planting a USB plug with a secret radio transmitter.
The unit, called Tailored Access Operations, also uses hacking in addition to spy craft. The most basic method involves phishing, sending an e-mail that lures a target into clicking on it and unknowingly downloading NSA spyware. More sophisticated techniques include identifying exploitable computer vulnerabilities by eavesdropping on a target's error messages; tracking a target's cookies to shadow their Internet use; and even surreptitiously diverting a target's web surfing to phony replica web pages of commonly used sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook.
Agents could use such fake sites both to see what a target is typing and to try to insert spyware on the target's computer, according to cybersecurity expert Michael Sutton at ZScaler, a California-based information technology security company.
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I'd love to know all the types of ways that the NSA gathers information . I want to how the infiltrate computers and how they send data back to themselves .
everybody just type a long string of terrorist buzz words and crash nsa spyware
Great work hurting the US for matterrs of vanity.
sensorship is in full effect now............
One of my uncles made maps for the CIA and the other was a cryptographer for the NSA. Trust me, this is nothing new.
Please note that even though this was published in Germany, the NSA only has jurisdiction in the USA. These are things they did to Americans. Well, mostly to Americans. I'm sure there were some immigrants in the mix.
Well done NSA. You hold the key to a safe and orderly progression of civilization. The world and our society is full of dangerous and destructive people. Keep up the good work.
Thank you, aurelius. Posted like another ignorant, hateful, dimwitted Tea Partier. This kind of ignorance is what makes the Republicans feel as giddy as sin as well as the "blue dog" Democrats!!! They love it!
The NSA does not like to work in the open. That is why the DNI lied to Congress when asked if they were actively collecting any information on US citizens in America.
I guess that none of us should be surprised by this ignominy since it's been going on for decades on end. In fact, this is exactly how these current cyber wars got started in the first place. Now Big Brother is watching all of us!!!
How so very true that is, George! Unfortunately, that won't change anytime in the near future, if ever!