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Spying and Technology: Robert Philip Hanssen
spludge writes: "The affidavit for the arrest of Robert Philip Hanssen, an FBI agent that spied for Russia for 15 years, makes fascinating reading. It reads like a spy novel with some neat technology references! In the affidavit Hanssen (aka "B") is portrayed as a computer expert with programming knowledge. The affidavit includes mentions of: the use of Palm VII's for communication, encryption techniques, track 40 floppy writing (?), a new NSA technique for surveillance (we aren't told what it is) and programs to automatically destroy computer data when it is compromised."
When you write data to an area of the disk that's not used by a standard format. i.e. In the days of 40 track floppys, tracks 0 to 39 were used to store data in the standard filesystem format. You could use some utilities to format track number 40 and thus you had a writable track that didn't interfere with the normal use of the disk and the data on it didn't appear when browsing the file system on the disk.
Al Sutton
Hey guys, the later 1541's, the 1571's, the 1581's, 1541C, and so on so forth, all had the jumpers on 'em. In fact, I have a 1541 at the bottom of my closet at home. With dip switches on it. Original tan casing, not a 1541C. Now all I need is a freakin Commodore 64 or 128 (preferably, as I have a LOT of 128 software on floppies at the house)
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
I have an A2000HD sitting right here under my desk, it needs a monitor cable to go to the 1084. Anyone got a line on one? PLEASE email me. :(
I can't -stand- to use the Amiga in Black/White mode, which is what happens if I hook up it's composite a/v outs
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
I have a *cuh-razy* thought here: maybe if our governments didn't keep so many "secrets", people wouldn't die either trying to find them out, or giving them away to other governments. Oh wait, what am I thinking. The government *needs* to use our money to develop secret stuff so that we can be safe from all those other governments developing secret stuff.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I still find excesive the death penalty as punishment for spionage(human right's respecting countries don't have this dilema).
Knowing the blured morality an espy has to deal with lineancy will be fairer and more useful: an spy that fooled people, specialy one without principles (that is what the evidence is implying this guy to be) can be locked for the rest of his/her life and could earn an early release teaching other spies how he managed to fool them.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Actualy, it is relisticly more that that, I assume he didn't fill out a 1099 MISC and then reported it as incom on form 1040 line 21. So even tho he gets paid 110k he really on gets to keep around 79k. I've been trying to find a link on NPR about what they said about the amount, but paraphraseing what they said : the amount paid is about twice the disposable income.
I don't use eleetism in my Email
so, as far as I'm concerned all spies end up dead or in jail...
as far as i am concerned everyone ends up dead
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
The foreign countries section of the Stasi. Head was Markus Wolf. They had spys in the highest positions of the NATO and and several gouvernments (Guillaume ...).
The inner sections were very effective, too. But they had completely different working agendas, though sometimes equivalent methods.
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
I remember having two CBM 8050 drives.
:). From what I remember, the 8050 had the same trick too.
They were FAST (IEEE-488 interface does that. It was the SCSI of its day), and kept most of the CBM directory structure.
They were supposed to use DS/QD disks. However, those 360K disks from the local store were able to format out to 1 MB.
However, to clarify. The 1541, 4040, and 1571 drives can write out to track 44 if you play some tricks with CBM DOS. I had code that would do that from one of my old cracker books.
The other interesting trick that was played was actually thought of by SubLogic. On Flight Simulator for the c64, the main loader program and a large amount of code was written to Track 18 (directory), and was only available via direct access.
However, the tracks 35-44 trick was quite good, and could be used to hide a lot more data than track 40
Actually, we don't seem to put spies to death anymore... They all seem to get life sentences. I guess that means they could apply for a pardon, once they're sufficiently forgotten about...
Sure, but I know some policemen and firefighters that are alive and happy, but I don't know of a single spy that is alive and happy; All the spies of heard of in jail or dead. So, as far as I'm concerned all spies end up dead or in jail, but most firefighters and policeman live long happy lives :-)
Acutally, in fiction "recruiting for espionage (whether corporate or national) is usually rooted in finding some personal problem and exploiting it with the proper carrot", but in recent interviews on NPR, they stress that spies in real life are motivated by money and ego.
Joe
Joe Batt Solid Design
That's exactly why USA is more dangerous than Russia: it hasn't got any experience of Stalinism. So nothing can prevent it from becoming a totalitarian society over time. Russia has got its antidote - basically, Russians don't believe what they are told in the media. Since totalitarism is about brain-washing much more than about guns and concentration camps, the States have a far and interesting way to go. Scary.
==================
By the time you have reached perfection, there's nobody around you to share it with.
==================
By the time you have reached perfection, there's nobody around you to share it with.
All your base are belong to us!
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
Which is why intelligence agencies have human and technical resources specialists...the CIA and FBI have a track record of neglecting their human resources (agents, not the James Bond type, but the real type who sit quietly for 15 years and steal information undetected) in favour of their technological (satelites, ECHELON etc) ones at their own costs.
I think you found the operative word.... scum. Let's face it, these are not the people you take home to visit the folks or to meet your sister. We have to deal with their (and every other country's) scum and they find ours in the woodwork. And whether it's allies or not (like pollard spying for isreal or when the french intelligence bugged air france planes years ago), they're all scum, and I wish they'd be treated appropriately when caught..and that doesn't me released.
There could in fact be a relationship in the effectiveness level of carnivore. If carnivore turns out to be highly effective it probably won't be catching the people smart enough to outwit it. It's easier to discern a pattern (and consequently avoid it) when oyu have a large amount of data to go on. So if 90% of the people sniffed out by carnivore are caught via email, well, gee, maybe I shouldn't be using email for my covert communications.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
BUZZZ
sorry but no dice. The correct answer is Theater Missile Defense dipshit
Can someone post a mirror of this as either pure PostScript or PDF that ghostscript can read? I get nothing but errors when handing this to ggv.
Facts to brighten your day:
1. Bush has already ruled out NMD. He favours TMD.
2. Moscow already has TMD.
3. The Russians have said they hope to sell their system to India.
1) Do not use prominent newspapers like the Washington Post to post classified ads as a signal to your contact. Instead, make a clever goatse.cx post as an AC - you will never be traced. Most surveillance agents browse /. at the +1 level, and even if they don't, there's no way they'd spot you out from the thousands of ACs.
2) Do not use real bridges and lamp-posts as drop-off points. Instead, join the blue team on a Team Fortress server and arrange to meet a red team dude on the bridge in 2fort5. Just nod (nobody pays that much attention) and drop off your backpack on the bridge. Watch out for the enemy snipers on the tower! They could be real intelligence agents...
Other options include spraying a wall with bullets in counterstrike or q3. The marks wear off pretty quickly and are impossible to log. No chance of detection there.
3) Use Windows for all your "work". You are guaranteed to lose your files, even the ones you want to keep.
4) Can't think of any more. oh well, add to the list...
w/m
I've always used standard parallel cables and serial cables with all the Amiga hardware I ever owned. Whatch00 talkin bout W1ll1s?
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
If you want to know the *real* reason for the success of the 3.5's, just try tucking a 5.25 into your shirt pocket.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
You really don't understand what printf does, do you.
The rational of the bombing was intimidating the Russians by covering up Japans recent surrender.
The US doesn't create something like the Atomic Bomb, the greatest weapon known to mankind, the most expensive and greatest scientific achievement of our time -- the US would never put so much effort and pride into a weapon of such massive destruction without showing what it can really do.
Ace
I have to agree with the other anon poster in that you are a moron. Like you said the russians killed the spies they caught, The US at least goes through the motions of letting the bastard have a lawyer and a chance to defend himself, how much chance do you think the russians gave? And every country in the world has that idea that its ok to spy as long as its for them and not aginst them, you should wake up from your crack dream and take a look at the real world. THere isn't a country in the world that doesn't spy on its "friends" and enemies.
"American spies get killed in other countries for what they do, and we don't raise a diplomatic stink about it. The risks and rewards are well known on either side of the equation. It's not like those other countries don't believe the exact same way about their own country and their own way of life."
Yes but if this were a religious war, would you feel justified in your actions because the other side feels the same?
My argument is that we should analyze Espionage for what it really is. It is the opening of a chess game that always costs lives. Spies are the first pawns out; and whether or not they exist - lives are still lost because of the military, and the militaristic views of the US government.
We can not argue that this spy is costing us lives, or them lives -- if America had nothing to hide, then people would not have to die. I feel I have a right and need to know exactly what these spies are after; does the US have a much larger arsenol than we expected, paid for by taxpayers.... do they take taxpayers money and spend it on huge espionage activities themselves; only to condemn double agents performing the same duty to a different country?
Or does the US just happen to serve better martini's at their political functions? Obviously these spies are after critical information that makes up a much, much larger picture. To condemn the spy is ludicrous, why don't we find out what information he had, and see who the most villinous entity is.. the spy, or the activities which attracted him?
ps. Moderating down my messages because they are "un-american" isn't exactly American.
Ace
Sic transit gloria slashdot
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
- too late -
"But then that would spoil your view of evil (as you so originally put it) Amerikkka"
My comments about Evil America were actually meant to be more of a reflection of the people who can overlook their own countries massive Espionage efforts and spending to focus on a single individual who supposidly hurt their precious governments Militarily controlled world-monopoly.
Gas prices high? Start a war, and hey, while you're doing it - claim it's about babies being slaughtered, and make sure the newspapers do next to nothing save for advertising your weapons so other countries will want to buy from you.
I've got a million common-sense examples of attrocities caused and controlled by the American government. I'm not attacking the USA as a country because of them. I am attacking the USA as a country because so many of it's own citizens are ademently doing their governments cover-up jobs for them;
"Russia does it too"
"The detonation of Two nuclear bombs saved lives"
(Yet if the American government were to execute a single individual in the street for political reasons; we would all be in an uproar... until someone justified it publicly).
"Saddham Hussein was on the warpath
(and besides, gas was gonna get expensive)"
The moniker, "Amerikkka" represents more than just the globally excepted view of America as a generally racist, militaristic, and Fascist-News controlled country...
It also represents the history of America as an openly racist country which made all of its wealth and established living conditions off of the lives of slaves and natives.
Now that Americas population is so high; the standard of living close to what it originally was and Slavery has been abolished; who does Amerikkka turn to for it's wealth and labour?
Foreign 'enemies'. Crazy people like Saddham who was ripe for a nationlist moral boosting war. Sure, Saddham might be crazy; and the thing that makes us not feel guilty for our actions against him is that his military actually believed and followed his fascist orders. Our military bombed hospitals and schools by accident, and we believed for a very long time that they didn't.
Moderating my messages down for being "un-american" is as "un-american" as the American Press.
Ace
"Stop listening to what others say. Think for yourself."
That seems a little ignorant.
Many reasons why the bomb should not have been dropped... unless of course, you don't plan to listen.
Ace
Not anymore - this is a blueprint for anyone wanting to play spy. Jesus .. if what's in this document is true, this guy Hanssen is a real prince. He knew exactly what he was doing, and exactly what effect it would have - that people would probably die because of what he was doing, and he didn't give a shit. What a royal asshole.
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com PGP KeyID: 0x0BD32C9B What I'm up to: http://intuitives.mine.nu
They also save lives. Remember that the FBI was tipped off to Hanssen's activities by a spy inside the Russian intelligence community. To the Russians, that person is a criminal who'll probably be executed if he's caught. To us, he's a hero. It's all a matter of perspective.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
That's it. From now on, I am absolutely checking under *every* footbridge I come accross, for thousands of dollars hidden in inconspicuous heaps of trash.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
According to an article at cnn.com at least two people from the US spying in Russia for us were executed because of this guy. So I guess it would only be fitting for him to face the same fate.
CNN has an interview with Markus Wolf from 1998:1 /i nterviews/wolf/
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/2
It makes you wonder how the FBI catch hackers but someone spying for someone else who is under their noses they don't seem to "notice". Makes you wonder if Carnivor would actually work. :-)
Your actions in life will determine your children's future.
often when a government finds a spy they will feed him or her false information. Its a common task
Looks like they're referring to the Linux Counter project:Here's his record.
Regards,
ehintz
No Doubt!
I believe the transfer rate was somewhere around 2 bytes per second as shipped. I remember that Epyx came out with the "Fast Load" cartridge, and everyone I knew had one, including me. Among other things, it allowed direct hex manipulation of the data on the disk. Good for removing the aforementioned copy protection schemes. QuickCopy was another "gotta-have" for the C-64 gamer.
And of course, anyone who had more than 1 drive remembers the method for changing the device number of the second drive. "Open the case and use a screwdriver to scratch off such-and-such a trace on the circuit board..." Ugh!!
Those were indeed the days....
"I was a geek before it was cool" --Me
... there's an (alleged) traitor named Robert Hanssen, a senior FBI agent.
:)
... there's a (convicted) serial murderer named Robert Hansen, who was born and raised in Iowa.
... and an FBI agent named John Douglas was instrumental in the capture of Robert Hansen.
... and there's a Slashdotter (me) named Robert Hansen.
... whose best friend in high school was named John Douglas.
I'm telling you, I think I'm going to have to go commit a crime against humanity or something in order to live up to the high standards my other namesakes have left for me.
Actually, the FBI doesn't polygraph its people. They claim it will destroy the "community of trust". And, yeah, it's not all that difficult to beat the polygraph. Just learn some biofeedback techniques.
Best Slashdot Co
There's a acronym used to describe why people become treasonous: MICE. Money: generally regarded as the safest reason; the people who want money are rational people who want to do thing, get their money, and survive to spend it somewhere. This can also cover other incentives, such as honeytraps. Ideology: These can be the most dangerous. Also, they can be fairly irrational; they believe they answer to a higher power, and will turn against their new patrons if they believe the new ones go against the ideology. This covers all forms, including political and religious. Concience: basic human feeling. This is a fairly safe one to play, as well, assuming that the subject then doesn't feel overly remorseful about betraying his or her former masters. Ego: the subject does it because they can, because they feel personally slighted or unappreciated by their former masters, or because they feel like getting back at their former masters. This can be dangerous; you never know when the ego will turn against the new handlers. Now, you can have crosses between these; the ego subject might expect to get paid. You can also have conflicts; be real careful offering an ideological subject money; you'll wind up insulting him.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
While I love hearing about spy stories as much as the next guy, what happened here is nothing to boast about... In movies, James Bond and other famous spies lead thrilling lives and are always saving the world from evil. In reality, spies cause death. People die because of information spies pick-up, from knowledge that so-so is a spy for this country, to atomic weapons secrets that leave this world in fear of destruction. I really think this subject should be looked upon with thoughts more torwards reality and less torwards the picture-perfect super-spy senarios hat come out of hollywood. In real life the good-guys get killed too.
Page 70 (really page 73) quotes a letter from Hansenn to the Russians:
One of the commercial products currently available is the Palm VII organizer. I have a Palm III, which is actually a fairly capable computer. The VII version comes with wireless internet capability built in. It can allow the rapid transmission of encrypted messages, which if used on an infrequent basis, could be quite effective in preventing confusions if the existance [sic] of the accounts could be appropriately hidden as well as the existance [sic] of the devices themselves. Such a device might even serve for rapid transmittal of substantial material in digital form.
This is...
1) Ingenious product placement in a Palm-Hansenn deal;
2) Asking them to call him "Hanssen. Philip Hanssen. Robert Philip Hanssen.";
3) An excuse to try 2-player PocketChess;
4) About to see Microsoft blame Palm for all espionage;
5) All of the above.
I for one can't wait to read whether they installed Time Traveler for him...
--------------------------------
All your double standard are belong to U.S. !!
I know next to nothing about US legislation, but in the country the person in question is suspected to collaborate with, if you're making public claims of any person being guilty in something, you have to either prove it or you will (in theory) be sued. Likewise, if you _publicly_ announce something that the court has decided to be otherwise, you can be sued as well (not for opposing the court decizion, of course, but for defamation).
Yes, but that's on Double Density media. 2.88 is ED media (one step up from HD). Add in the higher spec media into the equation and you've probably got 4Mb+
GCR stands for Group Code Recording.
What essentially happens is that four bits are converted into five bits using a small table, in such as way as it is impossible to have more than eight one-bits in a row, or more than two 0 bits in a row.
A 1 bit is then recorded as a phase change, and a zero bit is an absence of phase change.
A typical 4-5 GCR table might look like this:
0000 01001
0001 01010
0010 01011
0011 01101
0100 01110
0101 01111
0110 10010
0111 10011
1000 10101
1001 10110
1010 10111
1011 11001
1100 11010
1101 11011
1110 11101
1111 11110
Split your data into four-bit lumps, look them up in the table, and write the five-bit group codes out end-to-end. You'll never get more than two 0's or more than eight 1's in a row.
Because the recording density on a given medium is limited in terms of the number of phase changes over a given length, you improve over FM (which puts in two phase changes for a 1, and one for a 0) by using GCR, because you don't need so many phase changes, so you can use less area.
I hope that makes some sort of sense.
So basically what you're saying is that from the perspective of foreign countries, espionage is only partially used so that somebody set up us the bomb. The USA just wants to know that all your base are belong to us.
once you work for the US government, in any capacity, you're guilty when they say you are. Never mind that regulations are distributed to agency offices on CDROM, then printed and stuffed into eight or ten binders... they don't mean shit. If someone above you says you're guilty, you are.
What happens if you say you're not guilty? Mountains of "documentation" appears from the cracks. Documentation of accusations, made to look like truth. Enough lies on enough pieces of paper make you guilty, law or not.
It's probably cheaper to find a used Amiga on ebay. Last time I checked, the going price for an A500 was around $20 + shipping. An Amiga is capable of reading & writing to 720K MS-DOS floppies - you can copy your amiga software over to 720k floppies and sneakernet it over to your PC. Another approach is to build yourself a null modem cable to connect your Amiga and PC via SLIP, PPP, or PLIP (if you want to use the parallel port). You will have to make the cable yourself - the Amiga uses a non-standard pinout on it's serial and parallel ports (Don't forget to hook up the ground!). I used a null-modem SLIP connection to copy floppy images over to my PC and burn them to a CD-ROM; it took a while but I only had to spend about $15 on the parts to make the cable.
For amiga emulation under Linux (and BSD, and BeOs, etc.), use UAE or WinUAE if you are running Windows. If you want legal Amiga ROM images (and a lot more), get Amiga Forever from Cloanto. Illegal (or at least questionable) ROM images can be found easily enough with a Google search. (The proof is left as an exersize for the student.)
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
What I find most interesting is that they seemed to have an ocean of data for just a few months of work. How long do you think they had the affidavit prepared for? More than a few days, I am guessing. At some point 'they' became aware of the mole. Instead of just immediately crushing him, the trade secret would be to begin to feed him what was, in fact, false information. See where the information goes, find out what the reactions are, gauge the 'damage'. It is not by coincidence that Hanssen was recently 'promoted' into a 'new group'. I would suspect he has been known as a traitor for quite some time now (years here people). And if THIS is what they are making all the noise about, what is it that the FBI / NSA doesn't want us to be watching right now.
Paul Barth
Yeah, I loved my FastLoad cartridge... it sure made things a lot happier. The trick was to get the 128 when it came out with the built in 1571 drive (quite fast, relatively), and use the 1541 as the second drive (we had a toggle switch wired up so you could change the drive # quickly, in case you needed both the 64 and 128 to have one drive each...)
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
What you say?
Nice troll.
Yes, forget about "innocent until proven guilty".
You didn't, by chance, work for the prosecution in the Wen Ho Lee case, did you?
If you waited for a court case to reach completion (as well as optional appeals) before you formed an opinion on anything, you couldn't function. You use your judgement every day, why not here?
I think the accused has the right to a fair trial before we all go around calling him the "Spy of the Century," as was done in the Wen Ho Lee case. It is impossible, without complete access to all the data, to formulate an informed opinion of the guilt or innocence of Hanssen. While you may be hamstrung by the courts' moving slowly towards resolutions of disputes, I, for one, am content to wait and see what lies beneath the media spectacle.
True, if the guy is acquitted, he could sue those who said (or wrote) he was a spy....
Ah yes, we don't trust the legal system to help determine guilt or innocence, but we trust the courts to redress damages done by the overzealous press. How very consistent.
Is this really so surprising? Every country wants to have people spying for it, just not against it. Every country wants to have the upper hand, which comes from knowledge of their enemies' secrets. Of course, especially during the Cold War, the US had many spies in the USSR. They had many spies here. Both countries had double agents. If those people were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, BANG. They were shot. Or electrocuted, hanged, injected, whatever. The penalty for treason or spying is most often death.
On a side note... Why the heck is it taking so many tries to post this thing?
Somebody set up us the bomb. All your base are belong to us.
To expand on an earlier post: The accused is entitled to a presumption of innocence until proven guilty *in the eyes of the court.*
The Constitution only demands that the court system give you a fair shake. I, as a citizen, can presume you are guilty whenever I want.
The Constitution doesn't address me. The court can find an individual not-guilty. That's fine, that person don't go to jail, but the Constitution does not demand that I now agree with the verdict.
The revealing of Hanssen as a spy was done with great florish: a large raid, the FBI announcing how damaging Hanssen's revealations may have been, etc. All this despite the embarrassment having a spy within the agency is.
Is the FBI experiencing a period of being more open and honest?
Or is Hanssen being used as another example of why encryption is bad, carnivore is good, the FBI needs more powers to peep?
ColdCuts
I mean, honest, he is pushing for more nukes all around the place, no matter that it will start a new arms race and that it would violate treaties signed by the US, and all of the sudden: "look, look, here, we found a spy, and he sold all our secrets, we are compromissed , our current systems are useless....."
/. guys: you don't have to try to mask this as a technology issue, technology here is the least important thing of the matter.
Far toooooo convenient.
And give me a break
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Like a lot of the stuff Commodore put out back then, it was before it's time. Windows still hasn't learned from some of their innovations.
;-)
The disk format used on the 1541 and its predecessors (1540, 4040, etc.) was a technological marvel of it's day. Only thirty-five tracks, single sided, variable number of sectors per track, and the directory in the middle on track 18. Each sector was written in GCR format, allowing far higher data density than acheived on the IBM 9-sector format.
If they developed it further, we'd have had 82-track, double sided, double density floppies, holding more than a megabyte, and the 3.5" floppy might not be here today.
The wonderful thing about GCR as opposed to MFM encoding is that MFM wastes an awful lot of space with phase changes. GCR records more actual data, but each group code (the five bits that translate to four bits of actual data) is designed such that you never get more than eight 1-bits in a row, or more than two 0-bits in a row. This way you are guaranteed a phase change within a certain period, so the signal from the read head is kept 'moving'. The practical upshot of all this is that you can crank the GCR encoded data out onto the diskette at a faster rate than plain old MFM.
Putting the directory in the middle of the disk, along with the block allocation bitmap, lowered the average seek time, as the head a less distance to travel. The Amiga continued this, putting the disk home block, from which everything grew outwards, onto track 40.
Variable sectors per track (ranging from 21 on tracks 01-17, 19 on tracks 18-24, 17 on tracks 25-30, and 16 on tracks 31-35 (I'm guessing a little here)) allowed for greater data density without compromising data integrity on the inner tracks by exceeding the amount that could be reliably stored there. Hard disks today use a similar method, which is why the number of blocks on a disk might not equal the multiplied up values of cylinders, heads, and sectors. (LBA mode vs. CHS mode).
Of course, the thing about the CBM drives that made them the most fun drives to play with was the onboard 6502 processor with its 2k of memory, allowing you to download and execute code in the drive, speeding it up, flashing error messages in morse code on the LED, or even playing music using the stepper motor. (Actually, we used to do that with RL02's too, but it's equally unrecommended
By 'eck. Them were t' days.
The publicity of this case, and the resulting political statements surrounding this incident makes it very interesting, I ask myself if this isn't to draw attention from something else. Mr GW Bush himself stated that (paraphrasing) "Some countries do not share american values."
Food for thought.
you have no chance to survive make your time.
Nope. The last two are ways to get somebody to do something against his will. Not reasons somebody themselve will turn treasonous.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
...white tape, tacks, garbage bags, and floppy disks don't commit espionage - spies do.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Expect a rash of Palm parody ads regarding this>
10.00am - drop off kids at school
12.00pm - lunch at TGIF
4.00pm - hand off documents to KGB agents
What's on your Palm?
Still, I can see an argument for doing this, something along the same reason you do an occasional credit check on yourself.
One thing /. DID overlook is that he didn't SPY for 15 years, he just worked for the FBI for 15 years. If he had been spying for Moscow that entire time, I would hope he would have made more than just $1.4 mil for selling out his country.
I'm really easy to get along with once you people learn to worship me.
Ah, no. Hanson *is* either guilty or innocent, regardless of what may ever be proven. The correct answer is that, in legal proceedings, there is a guiding principle that the accused is entitled to a *presumption* of innocence until proven guilty. Perhaps this is not being done; however, Slashdot wouldn't be the place to check.
See...that guy from microsoft is not an idiot just spewing rhetoric - he knew what he was talking about. Linux is a communistic tool, probably jointly written by the GRU and KGB/SVR.
The man program is actually an interface to Mao's Little Red Book.
yeah but don't forget how people made up their minds about O.J. long before there was a verdict.
That's true, but remember that in this case Intellectual Property isn't being used just to maximize profits or hurt "consumers". It's being used to prevent crazy, non-democratic governments from nuking each other or us off the face of the earth. A lofty goal, and I'm willing to concede that National Secrets are worth protecting and keeping secret and differ quite a bit from general IP.
1. FBI has a recording of a call made between two pay phones in in 1986. How, why?
2. FBI has copies of huge amounts of correspondence between Hanssen and KGB.
3. I knew those BBSes were evil!
4. Hanssen was a DENTIST, and then an ACCOUNTANT. No wonder he became a spy, he had the two most boring professions on Earth, he had to go to the opposite extreme.
5. You would think a spy would get an unlisted number. He's in the phone book.
The latest Slashdot meme.
The shock is not "Oh my lord, the evil Russians had a spy in our country! Those bastards!" The shock is "Holy crap, this guy was here for fifteen years and we didn't catch him! We suck!"
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
I can't imaging risking my life and my family's happiness for $600k + a promise of an additional $800K ofer 15 years. That's just $100K a year, assuming that the Russian will eventually pay the additional $800k, to commit treason, which is punishable by DEATH! This guy was already making $110k/year salary, so this only doubled his salary.
If I double your salary, could I take a couple pot shots at you with my 9mm? What was this guy on?!
Joe
Joe Batt Solid Design
Capturing every single CPU instruction would not
be low overhead. Not only that, but doing those
captures would be impossible on many CPUs.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
I think I'll wait until the FBI can figure out
how to keep their own "Crown Jewels" secret before
I'll trust them with mine, thank you very much.
Was this traitor using proprietary software or "un-american" free software to do this double-crossing?
I certainly hope all of the other agents are using taxpayer-supported, Microsoft owned, C2 Secure (cough) copies of Windows.
A thought: maybe we should start infiltrating M$ with free-software double-agents that sneak around and plant bug-fixes everywhere. . .
Hmm that VM sounds suspiciously like the new Amiga vapourware VM ...
;)
Coincidence - maybe Amiag is working for the NSA ?
It could explain how Amiga survives with no new product to sell
As a security system designer, I've always found one of the most the interesting parts is dealing with insider collusion/fraud. We don't know much about the FBI ACS system, but we can draw some conclusions. First, the FBI kept a good audit trail, and recorded information about all searches. This proved to be very useful after the fact (to help convict).
Second, it appears this logged information was not used pro-actively, or if it was, it was not successful in catching Hanssen. I'd like to know if the FBI reviews these logs on a regular basis, and what type of analysis methods they use (but I don't expect to see this information become public anytime soon ;-) Actually, I can't see an automated tool, or even a human reviewer, flagging many of these searches. I mean, you might expect a counter-intelligence agent to periodically look for cases that involve dead drops.
The major exception was the search for his own name and address ( "9414 Talisman"). I expect someone might ego-surf once in a while, but doing this several times per year look suspicious. Actually, "searching for yourself" is the type of thing that the FBI probably has a [written] policy against (I know the IRS has similar regulations). It should be pretty easy to enforce this type of policy by periodically reviewing the audit logs (did user-a search for their own name, address, etc.).
The third conclusion is that Hanssen did not detect the case that was being built against him. The investigation had taken over a year, and they did not know it was an FBI agent at first (according to a NPR report on All-things-considered). I wonder if the FBI avoided using the ACS altogether, or if they were just lucky (before they suspected an FBI agent, they could have entered one of the dead drop locations). I'm sure there are some very interesting stories, that we will probably never hear.
one reason may be that it wasn't written when he allegedly started this stuff.
All your events are belong to us.
One thing /. DID overlook is that he didn't SPY for 15 years, he just worked for the FBI for 15 years. If he had been spying for Moscow that entire time, I would hope he would have made more than just $1.4 mil for selling out his country.
Unfortunately, yes, he has been spying for the USSR/Russia for the last 15 years. He started his activities sometime in 1985.
A double standard? I think it's more about using the scum-of-the-earth: people who'd betray their own people, family, friends. There are Russians like that, and the US gov't will use them, but I don't think there's any particular love or admiration for them.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Spy vs. Spy by Ronald Kessler provides a good description of the FBI's counterintelligence program.
It compares U.S. spying/counterspying efforts to soviet efforts(it was written in 1988, when the Soviet Union still existed). According to Kessler, to discourage double agents, soviet intelligence officers are shown a video of a KGB double agent being repeatedly raised and lowered into a blast furnace. The worst that Hanssen will get is some time in jail. Which side would you feel more comfortable betraying?
--The Colonel
But seriously, Good GOD! 15 years of spying only to make something like $600,000! How much would you need to face the death sentence?
I'm really easy to get along with once you people learn to worship me.
"Bad" is defined in this context as representing another nation's interests over our own, especially when that nation is considered a risk to our nation. That is basically the limit of moral considerations in espionage. Remember the goal here - to make sure that a nation that will use its power to do less evil unto the world than others maintains its edge. That, my friends, is the USA despite all the tripe you hear on Slashdot. As bad as some things the US Government does are, we are still a liberal democracy, and as such are far, far more beholden to the common interest than a converted Communist/Stalinist superpower like Russia with a chip on its shoulder about becoming a dominant player so it can help its buddies, like the Serbs, and sell arms to terrorists and rogue nations. Sounds great, huh?
So before you start blabbing about double standards understand the moral and ethical framework these people MUST operate in and realize that your life may depend on it (whether or not you are yourself an American citizen).
far more beholden to the common interest than a converted Communist/Stalinist superpower like Russia with a chip on its shoulder about becoming a dominant player so it can help its buddies, like the Serbs, and sell arms to terrorists and rogue nations.
Let's see, Russia supports Serbia, USA supports the KLA. Russia sells arms to terrorists and rogue nations and so does the US. Yep sounds perfect...
you are missing the most important part of the message
"you have no chance to survive make your time" translates to "you have no time to chance, if you're to survive." once this has been decoded, clearly "all your base are belong to us" references a specific drop point and time, possible the very place hanssen was captured.
funny to see history get re-written:
...since 1985 -- the height of the Cold War...
hahahaha! That's what I love about /. You can get anything from good info on floppy track writing (see below) to the dumbest, ill-informed naive post (see above).
>Is seems the US government's view is it's ok to spy, as long as your're spying FOR the US.
Double Standard? No, just one single standard, world-wide. Our spys good, your spys bad. It's quite simple. Feel free to remove your head from the sand anytime now.
This still works today, with 3 1/2 floppies. Normally floppies are formatted to 80 tracks (numbered 0 to 79). However, on most drives you can seek to tracks 80, 81 and 82, allowing you to hide data there. In linux, it's just a matter of typing setfdprm /dev/fd0 cyl=83 to have access to the full number of 83 tracks...
The same goes for track 80 (and 81-82?) on my old Amiga. There used to be copy-protect schemes which used these tracks, and thus there were LOTS of programs that could read them. Basically every kid in those days knew about the extra tracks... but then, non of those kids were spy catchers...
Another way of floppy copy protection was to make half-written tracks, when yielded a random different result each time they were read. The software would read this a couple of times, and bomb out if it got a consistent result. This was pretty hard to duplicate with a nibble-copy, and could only be done by damaging that part of the floppy
Many micro-distros use these extra tracks (80-82) to put extra data on the disk. A good example of this is Tom's Ultimate Boot/Root disk. It formats to a 1.72Meg!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
I find it easier to understand why one would spy for the US than the USSR. The US _loves_ spies -- maybe it's too many Bond films, but there's a cultural perception that spies are secretly heroic and motivated by a sense of higher moral purpose. After they finally escape and defect, they're feted as either heroes or merely fascinating and rewarded with well-paid lecture tours. In England, they even sprung the clearly guilty George Blake from prison, because some Guardian-reading liberals felt sorry for him.
In the East, spying is evil disloyalty whoever does it, and a "loyal" spy is regarded as barely any better than an enemy agent. There's a Russian phrase for it that translates as "Not Quite Dead Yet", meaning that even the most loyal and decorated of their own agents is only one step away from political disfavour, imprisonment and purging. Any sensible Worker would merely keep their head down and ignore the whole immoral process.
Of course, my own loyalty to the Communist International and the impending Dictatorship of the Proleteriat would outweigh any mere capitalist greed. We of Geeknatz have already destroyed faith in your stock market system with our hugely inflated boo.com's and lastminute.com's. Importing real Budweiser beer; beer that tastes of beer, not just malted rice, will destroy faith in your military-brewski complex. When your Mickey Mouse is out of copyright in 2004, we shall destroy your capitalist marketing system entirely.
All your brand belong to us !
There was an interesting keynote speech at O'Reilly OpenSource last year about copy protection & the old Apple Macs, I think.
:)
Steve Wozniak was apparently extremely annoyed that people were perverting his lovely computer by writing funny disk formats that simple file copying wouldn't work on.
So he goes away and builds a little bit of extra gubbins on to the disk controller and writes a few extra bits of code to get a nibble copier working. Viola! He can copy disks in any format, because he can read the individual bits from each track.
But... how can Woz protect his own disks, he wonders? He sits and scratches his head for a few days, then writes some more code, this time to alter the burst timing used to write bits. a zero is something like a 4(some unit of time) burst and a 1 is an 8(unit) burst.
The Mac filesystem can detect simple bit errors and will retry a few times, so Steve decides to write a few 6(unit) bursts at tactical places - 50% of the time, they'll get read incorrectly and the Mac will retry and 50% it'll read correctly and everything will be fine. When it has to retry, it's a 50% chance it'll get it right the second time and so on...
When you nibble copy them however, the copier will read the disk once, and won't understand the bits and so won't notice the errors and retry, so where there was a "wobbly" bit, there's now a bit fixed in the wrong position.
Hurrah! Woz had uncopyable disks.
But how could he copy them for his own use..?
Well, he realises that if you heat the material enough, you get electromagnetic(?) transference between one of his special-format disks and a fresh disk. (This is apparently some property of magnets in general).
For about a week, Woz is hardly seen - he's sitting in his office with a hair-dryer trying to heat the disks up enough to transfer the data. He has a big pile of molten floppies next to him...
Apologies to Steve Wozniak and anyone who attended at O'Reilly OpenSource 2000 for the hideously innaccurate transcription of the tale...
According to The Washington Post he knew C and Pascal and wrote communications apps for the FBI.
Best Slashdot Co
If floppies were made of wood, an Amiga will read of it !
"One should not condemn this guy as we are all told "Innocent until proven guilty, which is what we would hope for in a role reversed situation. "
What, like if America had been spying on him?
Spyings spying. That's all. It's going to happen, but no country is actually going to say "hey, come on in, take every secret we know".
It's accepted that there is spying going on, and that there will be spying in the future. But when a spy gets caught, there are consequences to be faced, if only to set an example, like "hey! We didn't like you doing that..."
The thing is, the Russian companies who would get this secret technical information belong effectively still to the state and are not run well. They couldn't use the information if they tried.
The smaller Russian companies with owner-managers who are quite efficient would never, ever see this information. The good technical people wouldn't work for the FSB, because the pay is etrrible and they can make 10 times as much working externally.
Incidentally, the FSB presentation the worst I have ever attended. These are people trained to keep secrets, not to present information. No visual aids, no handouts, just a monotonous monologue as the presenter read from a prepared script. The other funny thing was that it appears that the Russians have perfected cloning as the three FSB persons and the former FSB person who looked and acted similar!
See my journal, I write things there
Makes you wonder if Carnivor would actually work. :-)
Makes me wonder who Carnivore actually works for.
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
In other news, the FBI has not yet commented on reports that civilians touring the FBI HQ had actually conducted Philip Hanssen's screening interview.
What I'm wondering about the NSA is why didn't they found out about Robert Philip Hanssen earlier? I mean such a top-notch agent should have been under a special surveillance? It looks like they are more interested in John Doe... than in National Security.
in the case of defence, that is indeed the case, but that is not all. spies aren't just doing the daring "steal the nuclear warhead plans" missions. most of what government deals with is mundane in comparison, concerned with commerce. keeping these as "National Secrets", in the case of somewhere like the USA, is simply to maintain the country's status with respect to less developed countries.
i agree with your points, but that's not the issue i'm driving at. it's not like this sensitive weaponry stuff is really kept to just one or two superpowers in the world anymore. i'm sure the spying was much more mundane than that, concerning things which, in my opinion, are accredited National Secret status simply for the country's self-interest.
Fross
The annoying thing is that people are "morally outraged" when they discover a spy. Sure, punish him (as a deterrent to others, and an example) but pretending that YOU are always on the ethical right is the height of hubris. There are other countries (not just Russia). They are filled with people who think THEY are ethically "right".
Who the FUCK do you think you are to exlaim moral outrage?
Plus, whoever moderated the parent as "offtopic" should be rounded up and shot along with this spy...
Ah, this one fell for the old Track 40 Floppy-trap. How hard can it be to spot spies these days when they carry 5 1/4" floppydiscs?
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
It's all about double standards. The US runs double agents in Russia too. So it's okay for the us the have double agents, but are shocked when russia does the same thing?
I'm sure most people, pheds or otherwise, would have a hard time comprehending the idea of storing data outside of the high-level-formatted area of a disk drive, much less the idea of using strange formatting to hide things in the gap spaces of a track, and have an otherwise apparently empty disk. I can even think of a couple of easy tricks you could do with CD-R disks to hide data, without going into the steganographic possibilities of what appears to be a disc full of pr0n.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
You know, this 'felon' is caught remarkably soon after MS's statement about Open Source software being "Un-American". This all reaks of being an MS conspiracy to discredit Open Source by using it to sell secrets to our enemies!
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Melchett: Filthy Hun weasels, fighting their dirty, underhand war!
Darling: And fortunately, one of our spies...
Melchett: Splendid fellows, brave heores risking life and limb for Blighty...
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
thinking about it, all spies are doing is redistributing information from within closed, proprietary systems... if countries didn't have "intellectual property", there would be no need for spies.
(not to be taken _too_ seriously)
Fross
That's why the HV A was the best secret service
What is the HVA?
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
"Registered" Linux user even (whatever that means). Link to story here.
We'd like to know a little bit about you for our files
Yes, forget about "innocent until proven guilty". Use your own judgement about the quality of the evidence, decide for yourself how strong the case is.
If you waited for a court case to reach completion (as well as optional appeals) before you formed an opinion on anything, you couldn't function. You use your judgement every day, why not here?
True, if the guy is acquitted, he could sue those who said (or wrote) he was a spy. But he could be acquitted even if he was a spy.
Government contests they had proof which dates far back, so why wasn't anything done?
Having proof which dates back 10 years is not necessarily the same thing as knowing about it for 10 years.
The amount of detail in the affadavit makes it look like the investigators have got hold of the Russian file on "B". It appears that Hanssen was only under FBI surveillance since 2000.
I found reading the affidavit quite interesting. I can't find many more docs like it around. Anyone have any links to more documents on this case which are as detailed, thorough, or interesting?
All your events are belong to us.
You know what, guys? It may be simpler than everyone thinks. He specifically said "use 40 track mode", not "look on track 40" or some other phrase. I have to wonder if these were 360K disks written with a 1.2M drive, that had been previously formatted/written in a 360K drive (different track widths), and the Russians had a problem trying to read it on a 360K drive?
I mean, I just don't see him going to that much trouble to stick the data on a single out-of-range track when there's not much you can put there anyhow, and then not tell the Russians until after they had trouble with it. And it was dead-dropped, not mailed, so there wasn't much chance of interception.
Even if he did use some paranoid trick, in the end it didn't matter. After a little research (CNN.com) I found out that he was discovered when the pheds got a copy of some KGB files about his case. The KGB didn't know who he was (probably not until this week!), but the pheds were able to correlate the information rather easily.
It seems his main failing was insisting on dead-drops within walking distance of his home, in spite of the Russians wanting them much farther away. He had been trying to restore communications with the Russians, and was noticed driving by and pausing at the dead-drop area many times, and even waving a flashlight up and down a wooden post. He was arrested at the location, known as "ELLIS".
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
He can even upload space station instructions to androids. How do you think the rebels got the plans for the death star so easily?
spludge wrote: track 40 floppy writing (?)
Guess you weren't around in the 80's... 5 1/4" diskettes are usually formatted to have 40 tracks, numbered 0-39. But the disk drives can usually seek to track 40 or 41 without a problem. This lets you hide secret shit that DISKCOPY.EXE and so on won't pick up.
AFAIK it was first used as a rather weak copy protection scheme (you saw this a lot on the C64, at least...) and later on as a way to transmit viruses between floppies.
(Disk-based copy protection got more sophisticated, and used deliberately written errors, misalignment of the head, etc. in a vain attempt to confound the "pirate" copying programs.)
Interesting to see this used with some success against the feds... maybe they could have learnt a bit more from the phreaks after all. *grin*
> ... Robert Philip Hanssen, an FBI agent
/. story isn't exactly a nice thing to do (not that /. claims journalistic credibility, but a lot of people tend to assume it).
> that spied for Russia for 15 years,...
Uhm. There's a certain principle in western law, commonly known as "innocent until proven guilty." Making implicit assumptions as to the otherwise on front page
// zyqqh
The other funny thing was that it appears that the Russians have perfected cloning as the three FSB persons and the former FSB person who looked and acted similar!
:)
Ever see the FBI? They've had this technology for a long time. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if either one side stole it from the other, they both bought it from a third party, or else it demonstrates the idea of parallel development
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Hanssen is l337!
If only he used the Spam Encryptor, none of this would have happened.
Am I missing something obvious?
PGP may not be the most desirable protection scheme, but it's still something. Did the government decrypt all of the communiques that quickly? Or did this lamer just write things out in longhand on stretched rubber bands or toilet paper?
- Somone set up us the bomb
- We get signal
- Main screen turn on
- How are you gentlemen !!
- All your base are belong to us
Go and read the correspondence between Hanssen and his KGB controllers and note how these phrases convey the exact meaning of what correspondence passed between them.The last phrase is definitely the most disturbing. Was it sent before he was caught or after? I think we should be told.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
You can say whatever you want, but the most effective, most accurate and simply best spying method is still a motivated, intelligent, self-controlled person. Satellites, ECHELON and Carnivor are nothing against it.
That's why the HV A was the best secret service ever. But the best secret service doesn't help, if your gouvernment is ideologically trapped and incompetent, and all double agents ever have done less damage than weapon lobby or oil lobby. Hope Mr. Bush will learn this anytime.
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
In formulating an ethical rule, you cannot refer to particulars. Either spying for a country other than one's own is wrong or it is not. If you maintain that this guy did wrong, then you have to claim that those double agents in the KGB did wrong too.
Punishing this guy because he broke US laws is easy; arguing that he did morally the wrong thing is a lot harder if not impossible.
--
Really? I find that Taco says 7 things dumber than this before breakfast every day. And Katz has never said anything so intelligent.