This
National Security Agency complex in San Antonio, Texas, located in a
former Sony chip factory, is one of the central offices of the
intelligence agency's Tailored Access Operations, the NSA's top
operative unit. It's something like a squad of plumbers that can be
called in when normal access to a target is blocked.
Germany's
Der Spiegel is
reporting
Sunday that the US National Security Agency (NSA), working with the CIA
and FBI, has been intercepting laptops and other electronics bought
online before delivery to install malware and other spying tools.
According to
Der Spiegel, the NSA diverts shipping deliveries
to its own "secret workshops" to install the software before resending
the deliveries to their purchasers.
Elite hackers working for the NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO)
division are considered to be the intelligence agency's top secret
weapon.
The NSA's TAO reportedly has backdoor access to many hardware and
software systems from major tech companies such as Cisco, Dell, and
Western Digital and others. The NSA exploits Microsoft Windows error
reports to find weak spots in compromised machines in order to install
Trojans and other viruses.
The
Der Spiegel report also notes that the NSA has
successfully tapped into some of the massive, under-sea fiber-optic
cables that connect the global data infrastructure, in particular the
“SEA-ME-WE-4″ cable system.
“This massive underwater cable bundle connects Europe with North
Africa and the Gulf states and then continues on through Pakistan and
India,”
Der Spiegel reports, ”all the way to Malaysia and
Thailand. The cable system originates in southern France, near
Marseille. Among the companies that hold ownership stakes in it are
France Telecom, now known as Orange and still partly government-owned,
and Telecom Italia Sparkle.”
From
Der Spiegel:
To conduct those types of operations, the NSA
works together with other intelligence agencies such as the CIA and FBI,
which in turn maintain informants on location who are available to help
with sensitive missions. This enables TAO to attack even isolated
networks that aren't connected to the Internet. If necessary, the FBI
can even make an agency-owned jet available to ferry the high-tech
plumbers to their target. This gets them to their destination at the
right time and can help them to disappear again undetected after even as
little as a half hour's work.
Responding to a query from SPIEGEL, NSA officials
issued a statement saying, "Tailored Access Operations is a unique
national asset that is on the front lines of enabling NSA to defend the
nation and its allies." The statement added that TAO's "work is centered
on computer network exploitation in support of foreign intelligence
collection." The officials said they would not discuss specific
allegations regarding TAO's mission.
Sometimes it appears that the world's most modern
spies are just as reliant on conventional methods of reconnaissance as
their predecessors.
Take, for example, when they intercept shipping
deliveries. If a target person, agency or company orders a new computer
or related accessories, for example, TAO can divert the shipping
delivery to its own secret workshops. The NSA calls this method
interdiction. At these so-called "load stations," agents carefully open
the package in order to load malware onto the electronics, or even
install hardware components that can provide backdoor access for the
intelligence agencies. All subsequent steps can then be conducted from
the comfort of a remote computer.
These minor disruptions in the parcel shipping
business rank among the "most productive operations" conducted by the
NSA hackers, one top secret document relates in enthusiastic terms. This
method, the presentation continues, allows TAO to obtain access to
networks "around the world."
Even in the Internet Age, some traditional spying methods continue to live on.
* * *
An aerial view of National Security Administration (NSA) headquarters in Fort Meade, MD
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