NSA Spying on Offline Computers via Radio Waves

TwinkieDong

From the New York Times:

The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks.

While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer experts and American officials.


The technology, which the agency has used since at least 2008, relies on a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into the computers. In some cases, they are sent to a briefcase-size relay station that intelligence agencies can set up miles away from the target.


The radio frequency technology has helped solve one of the biggest problems facing American intelligence agencies for years: getting into computers that adversaries, and some American partners, have tried to make impervious to spying or cyberattack. In most cases, the radio frequency hardware must be physically inserted by a spy, a manufacturer or an unwitting user.


The N.S.A. calls its efforts more an act of “active defense” against foreign cyberattacks than a tool to go on the offensive. But when Chinese attackers place similar software on the computer systems of American companies or government agencies, American officials have protested, often at the presidential level.


Among the most frequent targets of the N.S.A. and its Pentagon partner, United States Cyber Command, have been units of the Chinese Army, which the United States has accused of launching regular digital probes and attacks on American industrial and military targets, usually to steal secrets or intellectual property. But the program, code-named Quantum, has also been successful in inserting software into Russian military networks and systems used by the Mexican police and drug cartels, trade institutions inside the European Union, and sometime partners against terrorism like Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan, according to officials and an N.S.A. map that indicates sites of what the agency calls “computer network exploitation.”

Full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/15/us...imesworld&_r=0

what are your thoughts? This is not to start anything political with parties and such just more of a tidbit of information for your mind.

reality_girl

Babygirl928

interesting. I feel like the bottom lnie is the more technological we get, the more of our privacy is compromised. People don't truly understand what all these pretty new "gadgets" open the door for. You can be tracked by your phone....yeah its sold as a good thing in case you are trapped or kidnapped......really??? Truth is if they can find out what they want to "help" you they can find out even more to "help" themselves. With every upgrade comes a new way for he government to keep an eye on every one all the time. Sometimes our need to rush through this life and not live simply, causes us to turn a blind eye to what is going on around us. All the government does is dangle something new and shiny and we all turn into kids on Christmas morning lol. Just my opinion :drinker:

TwinkieDong

things of importance seems like no one cares about. Maybe overwhelmed?