30+ CIA agents killed because disguised comms sites used Google-able HTML (2018)

The CIA and other US agencies hosted innocent looking sites (yoga, books) with secret login areas for covert communication. Iran found one of these of sites and used this to uncover ALL of them, probably through a shared piece of HTML. Agents then could be easily discovered by state monitoring of visitors to these sites. Iran shared this with China & other powers and at least 30 agents killed. Internal CIA reports said upwards of 70% of worldwide operations had been compromised.

John Reidy, a CIA contractor repeatedly raised warnings of these flaws before they were discovered by a foreign power but was ignored and fired.

http://media.mcclatchydc.com/static/graphics/20150723-PDF/20...

https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/75/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18376089

Welcome to "cyber", where shooting the messenger is how threats are dealt with. I'm not really surprised at the attack vector, though: For professionals it is pretty obvious, but for a non-technical decision maker? Not so much.

further proof that the US is decades behind other foreign powers

   This almost certainly included information sharing between these countries on U.S. covert communications techniques, said multiple former officials — the makings of a real-life “axis of evil.”

so you spy on sovereign states within their own borders, and somehow they are the axis of evil when they catch your spies. this is narcissitic perversion at the state level

wow thats so lame. its not iranian hackers that are sophisticated, its us cia com “hackers” that are apparently lame. each day it seems we discover the emperor’s clothes. a shame really because we needed the cia to bring us democracy.

oh wait..