Sounds like “fucked up the firewall” == "fucked up a WHERE clause"
Botched CIA Communications System Helped Blow Cover of Chinese Agents
71–80 of 206 posts
Re: Botched CIA Communications System Helped Blow Cover of Chinese Agents
#72>But the CIA’s interim system contained a technical error: It connected back architecturally to the CIA’s main covert communications platform. When the compromise was suspected, the FBI and NSA both ran “penetration tests” to determine the security of the interim system. They found that cyber experts with access to the interim system could also access the broader covert communications system the agency was using to i…
How stupid it is to spend so much effort on compartmentalising their intel net in the country, but have all spies report by dialing in into the same website in a country employing few brigades worth of people reading tcpdumps 24/7? Compare that to one way coded messages over hf radio: a place for pick up of a dead drop in n days is broadcasted, then it is picked up by a man who reads it, destroys it, and gtfos from t…
My guess is that this is actually relatively new system that was implemented after the criticisms in the week of the September 11 attacks. One of the stories you keep hearing is that the plot was not discovered in time because agencies were not sharing enough information.
Re: Botched CIA Communications System Helped Blow Cover of Chinese Agents
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would an immigrant Be an immigrant if they held love for the CCP and the Chinese Government?
There's been a lot of discussion recently about Chinese influence or interference in Australia, and much of that is through Chinese people living in Australia. For example, Chau Chak Wing is a Chinese-Australian billionaire with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, is one of Australia's top political donors, and is the unindicted co-conspirator in a bribery case involving the former president of the UN general assemb…
Chinese influence has been going on a long time.
I'm not sure whether politicians are aware and think they're immune. Or unaware and naive.
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-10-28/news/mn-55837_1_busin...
Re: Botched CIA Communications System Helped Blow Cover of Chinese Agents
#74Knowing how absurdly insecure any civilian consumer system is (laptop, smart phone, home assistant, self driving car), with zero day fire-and-not-a-drill-at-all advisories, pretty much every month, I don’t get how this sort of thing happens.
I also fail to see how a decision like this could be made:
The CIA had imported the system
from its Middle East operations...
Cell phones make sense in desert territories with good satellite coverage, and attacking, as much as operating those same cell phones makes sense too, in a volatile atmosphere.
Meanwhile, in China, with world class supercomputing facilities operated at scientific research institutions, one can only safely assume that no amount of cryptography or electronic transmission is safe. Not even one-time pads.
Each seems like it’s own game, with it’s own rules. What a mistake to not approach them differently. It’s like trying to steal cars from a suburban driveway at dinner time, versus a city parking garage during rush hour. A car is not simply a thing with wheels, that rolls away as soon as you can hop inside.
Re: Botched CIA Communications System Helped Blow Cover of Chinese Agents
#75It took 8 years for the CIA to figure out what happened?? This certainly explains why China and Russia continue to conduct cyber operations basically at the same level of intensity they have been for years - US intelligence, despite its enormous, unaccountable budget is unable to stop them or even know where they are compromised. If there is an actual hot conflict between the US and either of these nations, I shudder…
For starters they can't really pay market salaries for the skills they need so to some degree this has more to do with laws on the books than with management and organizational failures.
Re: Botched CIA Communications System Helped Blow Cover of Chinese Agents
#76This is a fascinating story. But I always think about what the motives are to reveal such information. What you read is always different than the actual...
In a separate note, I'm not sure technically what the right solution is, but I imagine an encrypted stenographic message on a popular peer to peer internet service would be the best way to avoid detection. ... When the entire web is being monitored.
Re: Botched CIA Communications System Helped Blow Cover of Chinese Agents
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
From an earlier NYT piece: > According to three of the officials, one was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building — a message to others who might have been working for the C.I.A. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spie...
USA has the death penalty for treason too. Now you can argue back and forth (US wants China to eventually be democratic so I'm helping China by spying for CIA...etc) but they essentially betrayed their country. Chinese efficiency: Torture them till they tell want they know and then teach others a lesson along the way too. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2381 Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States,…
The last execution of an American for treason was in 1862.
Martin James Monti, United States Army Air Forces pilot, convicted of treason for defecting to the Waffen SS in 1944. He was paroled in 1960.
Robert Henry Best, convicted of treason on April 16, 1948 and served a life sentence. (Which turned out to be 4 years. Died in 1952 in prison of a cerebral hemorrhage.)
Iva Toguri D'Aquino, who is frequently identified by the name "Tokyo Rose", convicted 1949. Subsequently, pardoned by President Gerald Ford. (She was fined $10,000 and given a 10-year prison sentence. Paroled after 6.)
Mildred Gillars, also known as "Axis Sally", convicted of treason on March 8, 1949; served 12 years of a 10- to 30-year prison sentence.
Tomoya Kawakita, sentenced to death for treason in 1952, but eventually released by President John F. Kennedy to be deported to Japan. (In 1953, Eisenhower commuted sentence to $10,000 fine and life imprisonment. Kennedy ordered him released in 1963 on condition that he leave the US and not return.)
Robert Hanssen, a high-ranking FBI agent who was a spy for Russia, is spending several life sentences in the pokey but wasn't convicted of treason.
Re: Botched CIA Communications System Helped Blow Cover of Chinese Agents
#78It took 8 years for the CIA to figure out what happened?? This certainly explains why China and Russia continue to conduct cyber operations basically at the same level of intensity they have been for years - US intelligence, despite its enormous, unaccountable budget is unable to stop them or even know where they are compromised. If there is an actual hot conflict between the US and either of these nations, I shudder…
For starters they can't really pay market salaries for the skills they need so to some degree this has more to do with laws on the books than with management and organizational failures.
Bingo. Larger budgets get poured into more people not better people.
Re: Botched CIA Communications System Helped Blow Cover of Chinese Agents
#79Maybe they should have used BBM/iMessage/WhatsApp - all the civilian gear governments are screaming they need backdoors into because they’re too tough to crack... Yes I say this partly in jest and also partly as a ‘why didn’t they’. BBM Enterprise over a VPN service popular with movie streamers would have actually helped them blend in... digitally speaking.
All those are blocked in China, no?
Re: Botched CIA Communications System Helped Blow Cover of Chinese Agents
#80>But the CIA’s interim system contained a technical error: It connected back architecturally to the CIA’s main covert communications platform. When the compromise was suspected, the FBI and NSA both ran “penetration tests” to determine the security of the interim system. They found that cyber experts with access to the interim system could also access the broader covert communications system the agency was using to i…
Agreed. > U.S. intelligence officers were also able to identify digital links between the covert communications system and the U.S. government itself, according to one former official—links the Chinese agencies almost certainly found as well. These digital links would have made it relatively easy for China to deduce that the covert communications system was being used by the CIA. In fact, some of these links pointed…
Approved by who? Senior spies who aren't developers?
And who do you think developed this communications system they use? Given government pay scales probably relatively junior web developers trained and used to a consumer-oriented software culture in which "oh let's just drop in this convenient re-usable library" is a no-brainer.