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How The CIA Duped The Soviets' Line X Network
sundling writes "There are interesting articles here(1) and here(2)
on software espionage against the Soviets.
In the Ronald Reagan era, a Soviet spy network (Line X Network) was looking to steal software to run oil pipelines. The CIA found out what they were trying to steal and fed them bogus versions. This is of course not the only time the CIA has done this.
... An article on the ethics of programming mentions this very topic and the moral implications." Update: 03/02 09:22 GMT by T : Oops -- this is a dupe.
If you look at this link, you'll find that, "In its espionage role, the KGB was mostly reliant on human intelligence, unlike their western counterparts, who relied far more on imagery intelligence (IMINT) and signals intelligence."
Bottom line is, the CIA has always had the edge in technology, but the KGB still had an advantage in human intelligence. They had far better human recruitment than the CIA ever did. (And for those who really follow this stuff, you probably already know that human intelligence is one thing that is very sorely lacking in our war on terror today.)
From the article:
including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural-gas pipeline
I find this very hard to believe. *If* you actually made a system so fragile, that explosions could be triggered by software, would you install software you stole from the enemy on that system?
Besides, if it was indeed possible to trigger an explosion, it had to be very proprietary code. Didn't the russians wonder why code they stole from the enemy would run on their own computers?
I'm just wondering, not trying to say that this might not be exactly what happened.
... that to protect us from gangs and thugs and criminals, we have to employ gangs and thugs and criminals.
And don't just say "because, thats the way it is".
Whenever I hear about tactics like this from the very government that is supposed to represent 'higher values', I'm reminded that government is The Perfect Con.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I have the feeling that someone is trying to feed us a bogus story. I doubt there is a way to determine if any of this has actually happened.
Looks like it is tech that has won.
....but we all know how US intelligence brilliantly prevented the 9/11 strikes with its all tech, no human intellignece approach. It seems to me that US intelligence will have to do some rethinking on the subject of doing completely without human intel sources. If 9/11 and the whole Iraqi WMD mess have proven anything it is firstly, that satilites and other spytechnology no matter how advanced will never completely replace the humble human traitor and secondly that no matter how good you are at running high tech spy gear it does not qualify your to run human spies. That is a very special skill and hard to learn. The CIA cold do worse than to take a leaf out of the books of the KGB when it comes to recruiting human spies, it is a skill the CIA has all but lost.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
The US had not declared war against the USSR, yet commited acts of sabotage and assassination against Russian targets. Doesn't that make the CIA and the US regiem terrorists?
Way to "think outside the box" and see the Cold War for what it really was: unilateral aggression by the USA and CIA against the poor, defenseless USSR and KGB! Seriously, it's one thing when you're talking about the USA bullying some third world country, but comparing that to the Cold War is apples and oranges (and a cheap attempt to score some anti-American karma points). And if you want to know which of these two formerly-equally-matched superpowers was the real terrorist regime, put it this way: there wasn't exactly a flood of Americans expatriating to Moscow to flee CIA gulags.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Not to mention that they had the skills to build that complex system yet they were incapable of writing the software for the controller???
Yeap, it makes sense because Soviet programmers are incompetent and American programmers are the shiat.
This smells propaganda and nationalism to me, but unfortunately some people will buy it.
Actually the US committed no acts of any kind against the USSR in this particular case. They made some intentionally buggy software which was STOLEN by SPIES. A Soviet act of aggression was used in a passive way to entrap them. It was sneaky and nasty but I don't think it could be considered an act of war by any interpretation of international law.
I must have missed the part of the story that mentioned an assassination.
Also, while the term "terrorism" is fairly loose it does have SOME meaning. Terrorism is the use of violence to create fear in a population in order to intimidate or coerce a society or government. In this case the violence was rather passive (we passively let the soviets steal malware) The "sabotage" was not intended to cause fear in the general population or even among the leadership aside from a fear that stolen technology may be booby-trapped.