that is an incredible connection. thank you for sharing. im glad im not the only one who has read most of the Snowden leaks, and whenever anything new happens like a big hack or leak, i go back and search the Snowden files to see if there are any connections.
in that list of program names, i remember seeing WILDCHOCOBO and DARKTHUNDER in other Snowden files.
here is WILDCHOCOBO
https://search.edwardsnowden.com/docs/SPINALTAPMakingPassive...
page 19 of that is very very interesting. it lists around 100 NSA programs that are all part of some kind of global passive CNE implanted on hundreds of servers that provides ingest/exfil to feed back home into XKEYSCORE.
DARKTHUNDER is also on there.
the odd thing is that slidedeck is about NSA program JOLLYROGER tracking SD cards via their unique hardware volume IDs.
why would NSA TAO be hacking MSPs like Netsential at all? why is NSA spying on Fusion Centers, who get their reports from FBI, who themselves got the data to write the reports from NSA SIGINT? why is NSA spying on regional and local Law Enforcement further down the food chain? NSA already has that data. NSA wouldnt even need to use TAO and CNE to collect data from Netsentia. They could just ask for the data.
my best guess is it's some kind of Inside Threat monitoring system. TAO hacks into those systems to install CNE implants that watch for SD cards being inserted, to detect rogue Fusion Center and LE personnel who are bulk stealing files by copying them onto SD cards.
but that seems like a really dumb thing to do. why not just disable the SD card readers and/or remove the hardware? a PC in a Fusion Center shouldnt even have an SD card reader.
ironic, since Snowden roughly implied in his recent autobiography that the way he stole millions of NSA's top secret files was by sneaker net'ing them home using SD cards.
LOL NSA has been screwing up its defense against SD cards for at least a decade and that screw up is what made Snowden possible.
i bet dozens of Russian and Chinese and Israeli moles have stolen far more than Snowden ever took from NSA using