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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.
Dupe dupe dupe dupe dupe!
3 24 3&mode=nested
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/02/115
Even sent two messages to the 'on duty editor'. Not that it matters, apparently. Considering this is like story 7 in a row or so for him, spanning the last several hours, I suspect it's bedtime for someone...
Not to sound like a broken record (even if slashdot regularly does), but it isn't news a month later, guys....
I'm in the US submarine force and I'll just suggest that the US is pretty good at getting a job done when (1) they want it done and when (2) the doors are closed to the public.
Separately, learn some of the facts surrounding JFK's assassination (and the likes who go to no end to increase their power) and you'll get a feel for what goes on behind closed doors. It's very depressing.
G-Force music visualization
Indeed! How slashdot duped its readers into thinking this one hadn't already been showed!!!!!!!!!
How The CIA Duped The Soviets' Line X Network
Tierce
Who sponsors your feelings?
If anyone wants a link to the original New York Times (#include "free_reg") article by William Safire about this incident, here it is. Now you don't have to hunt down the dupe to read it.
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.)
What would the CIA have done if the Soviets sought out OSS software instead of the typical closed-source software to run those pipelines ?
__________________________________
Free your mind - Flush your toilet
Or what else is Windows supposed to be ;)?
- 4r0g
Line X...
Linux...
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
programming is not telling a computer how to do something, but telling a person how they would instruct a computer to do something. -- J. Bartlett
if one accepts this definition he/she should definitly think that programming is highly ethical activity.
Aure entuluva!
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.
23c. In no way do the authors of this software take responsibility or blame for any pipeline explosions that may or may not occur through the normal use of this software.
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?
ediron2:
...
Thanks for sending the notes; it looks like the note-to-editor system is down at the moment, unfortunately. It *is* bedtime for me, but I was actually sitting there waiting, reading email
Sorry, I missed this one the first time around.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The odd dupe is OK, for me at least. I never saw this story the first time round. Some people don't sit and read every single story on Slashdot, all the time, ever, you know. I might have been (gasp) out, or on holiday.
Get your own free personal location tracker
... 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. --
If this doesn't prove the case for open source software, I don't know what will.
... at the very least.
Those Russkies should've broken out their debuggers on these binaries before putting them into operation
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
obligatory "you must be new here" line....
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
there's a bit of information on the CIA's website about it too. no explosion info though
Jeremy Logan's Website.
To be fair, the number of dupes does seem to have dropped off quite significantly in the last month or two.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
And I really wouldnt like to be in the shoes of the morons who manage to convince people that they planted that software. If by some weird coincidence that thing was within 10 miles of any of the control rooms of that pipeline which exploded. I can just imagine 400 beraved families suing the Uncle Sam under the Patriot act for ... ahem... terrorist acts.
Oh and to make things more interesting, as this medical journal indicates, the US actually sent doctors to treat the poor burned children...
I thought that was how all software developers treat their customers.
Why else would the Supreme Court allow him to kidnap and hold foreign nationals indefinitely in Cuba in direct violation of both the spirit and the letter of our constituion, on the grounds that it doesn't apply to people unless they're a citizen of this country (And sometimes not even then.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Governments need to decide whether they want to be trusted. If they want trust, then they should avoid any hint of sneakiness.
The U.S. government secretly overthrew a democratically elected president of Iran, President Mossadegh. That started a chain of events that eventually continued with retaliation: The destruction of the World Trade Center.
Osama bin Laden cannot be effective in being violent if he does not have support. He is far less likely to have support for his violent schemes if people generally trust the U.S. government.
The U.S. government has bombed 24 countries since the Second World War. That has lowered the level of trust. Those who live in countries that have been bombed do not always think that the violence was "justified".
Old idea: "You shall not kill." New clauses: a) Unless you need to create a distraction to further your political purposes, b) Unless you think it would help you be reelected. c) Except if you fear something that someone might do in the future. d) Except if you want the oil profits. e) Except if some of the people in the other country think that killing some of them and destroying some of their property is an excellent goal.
There are 10 kinds of people; those who know ternary, those who don't, and those now hunting for a dictionary.
.. the Russians never managed to sneak some spy laden software into the US, and UK, software so pervasive it'd work its way into every home in the world. Hey.. why's my copy of Tetris trying to send something past my firewall?
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.
Communists using Line X ? Darl should be able to get a lot of mileage out of this one!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Some company called Microsoft was trying to steal a government operating system, so the CIA fed them a bogus version....
I suspect that this whole story is an urban myth that may have a grain of truth. I worked through the mid 70's and 80's on Process Control and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems that are used to control nuclear, chemical, space and pipeline systems. This was the period when systems moved from largely pneumatic telemetered systems to electronic and computerised control. The old technology had run large industrial systems since the war, and was by and large highly reliable. The new technology was considered cheap and inferior and was not (and is still not) trusted. Such systems were created fail safe, such that computer crashes caused shut downs, not explosions. This was very ingrained into the designers of such systems. Failures such as Chernobyl and Flixborough added to the designers' caution, even though control was sometimes not a contributory factor. Most software systems in this category required very significant source code modifications to make them fit for purpose. It was rare to ship a system without giving the purchaser inspection access to the code so that they could assess the quality for themselves. The designers of this soviet pipeline would have had double cause for concern, and would most certainly have been suspicious of the provenance of the system. In such a case, it is highly likely that they would have built in extra hardware constraints into the system to prevent failure due to malicious software, especially if they could not read and validate the source.
I stole this
Hmm.. wasn't Microsoft also around during Reagan's presidency?
Wasn't there also a blackout on the entire Eastern US due in-part to improper response by the control software to the outages that initially started at First Energy?
Isn't it also possible all these email worms, viruses, and trojans might be some form of espionage by workers planted at Microsoft?
Ethics are a professional issue.
Engineers, Doctors, Priests, Teachers and Lawyers all have ethical standards.
Software developers and contractors should also, at least they could have some liability.
As to where to draw the line, ethically that is a question for philosophers, legally it belongs to lawmakers and the courts.
My view is that feeding bad code is just an attack, and of a similar ethical stance to a bomb or similar acts. Making the bad code would be the same as making the bomb. Making shoddy code would be the same as a shoddy bookshelf.
In the second segment of Hafner and Markoff's Cyberpunk, they write about the crackers that Cliff Stoll found, and reveal that they went to the Soviets, saying they could hack into several government and military sites. The Soviets said what they'd rather have is Unix source code. So, while the rest of the crew had fun getting into NORAD looking for the WOPR, the one with a job as a sysadmin cut a couple extra tapes in the backup schedule and carried them through Brandenberg Gate.
Gee, I guess GNU really is communist. B)
Human intelligence, or HUMINT is mostly done by recruiting and operating local agents who are already of the target culture, not by infilitrating that culture (very hard to do) except in Hollywood movies or very very rare cases (sleeper agents etc.)
It's not Timothy's fault; the CIA is feeding him duplicate stories.
yea, because as history has shown us, humans are by default an extremely trusting species, they would never do under-handed, sneaky, or other-wise shady actions unto each other, expecialy not their friends.... no... this "un" trustfullness is the work of... the russians!!
Governments need to decide whether they want to be trusted. If they want trust, then they should avoid any hint of sneakiness.
Trust cannot be ascertained by "not" being sneaky. Trust is for the most part about image and public knowledge, look at how any country or organization is viewed and youll see that your trust comes straight down to how people around you feel about that company/country, and what youve "heard" about them... which leads STRAIGHT into dis/mis-information. For 50 years the US and the USSR have been writing propraganda manipulating the image of the opposing super-power to look as grotesque and evil as possible within the tolerence of their respective populaces. If one friend tells you coca-cola sucks, you might try it anyway, but if 20 friends say they "heard" it sucked... you wont touch it.
The U.S. government secretly overthrew a democratically elected president of Iran, President Mossadegh. That started a chain of events that eventually continued with retaliation: The destruction of the World Trade Center.
Defending the actions of any of the world players (US, former USSR, china, France, UK, india, etc...) is an act in futility, every one of them has been acting in their best intrests for years... hell.. hundreds of years. Even the smaller countries without much power have been (iraq, syria, lebanon, israel, libya, cuba, etc..). It is the legacy of man to do so, its the same legacy that prompts us to form companies, and to compete against rivals in our industries... which causes some companies to "cross the line" with corporate espianage... but bottom line... the only point that youve "gone too far" is when you've broken an arbitrary law. I dont condone these actions... but if humans were "trusting" by nature... we wouldnt need laws.
Osama bin Laden cannot be effective in being violent if he does not have support. He is far less likely to have support for his violent schemes if people generally trust the U.S. government.
This is Partialy True, without a moral ground-swell of a great and fearsome foe who is out to "get you"... osama wouldnt have the human resources to draw upon. This is an old tactic we have used along with any other war machine. Osama makes us look bad by pointing at our actions, and HIS OWN bombings... and saying "look what those americans cause by being here". He scapegoats us for all the ills in the middle-east, some of it our doing, and much of it not. Effectivly creating hatred for us amongst a people who dont know our populace. The US has made a regular routine out of demonifying our "enemies"... weve made china and russia look evil for long terms of time, we made fidel look like a monster, and osama out to be nothing more than a rabid american hating killer when he's really a freedom-fighter we trained.... provided freedom means no communism.
The U.S. government has bombed 24 countries since the Second World War. That has lowered the level of trust. Those who live in countries that have been bombed do not always think that the violence was "justified".
I shudder to think how many countries might have been A-bombed had we not taken some of the actions we did. Without a "super-power" or a couple of balenced super-powers in the world, we would have seen many horrendous wars do a lot more damage. Order at the edge of a sword isnt to be applauded, but it better than mayhem and the chaos that comes from a power vacum.
Old idea: "You shall not kill." New clauses: a) Unless you need to create a distraction to further your political purposes, b) Unless you think it would help you be reelected. c) Except if you fear something that someone might do in the f
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
There were a number of reasons why the US Navy thought Pearl was safe.
1: Range. Japanese ships were not thought to have the range to come all the way to Pearl. Much less undetected. They developed refueling techniques to make this possible.
2: Bombs vs Battleships. Conventional bombs of the day were *not* able to affect a Battleship ( the ship used to project power in those days, the day of the carrier was not yet there, they were mainly seen as good for scouting ( battlecruiser replacements ) ). The deck armour was too thick. So, what about Arizona, you ask? Good question. They converted 16" Battleship shells ( the very items designed to go through the deck armour, *and* the much thicker side ( hull ) armour into bombs by adding fins. Then they dropped them from approx 10k meters so that they would have the KE to do the job. In that day, only torpedoes were thought to have what it took to sink a battleship. Which leads me to:
3: Topedoes. The harbor was thought to be safe from attack by torpedoes, as it was only about 40 feet deep ( just a bit deeper than the draught of the ships, IIRC ). This is important as the torpedoes of that day usually sunk to about 75 feet after being dropped from the airplane. The British had pulled off a similar raid at Taranto against the Italian navy using this, but that harbor was deeper than Pearl. The Japanese attached breakaway fins to the torpedoes to arrest their fall on hitting the water, keeping them from sinking so far, and thereby made the attack possible.
Not to mention that the CIA did not exist in those days.
And while I too would like to see our intellegence agencys perform better, I would suggest that it is altogether too easy to armchair QB what they do. I am sure that you have been through something that you did not see coming, but in hindsight, you kick yourself because it was blindingly obvious ( from that side of the event ). Go try to do that job before you kick them too hard about how they have done it.
emt 377 emt 4
There are historical precedents for this sort of thing. According to one of my old high school teachers, when the Japanese were building up their war fleet in the years before WWII, they approached an American shipbuilding company about buying plans for old military ships. Smelling trouble, the company alerted the US government ahead of time and the plans were carefully changed. When the first ship was launched it immediately rolled over due to a deliberate weight imbalance in the bogus plans.
I've never been able to verify this story.
There was a computer control system but all it did was really a glorified remote. You could setup some equations like when opening valve A 10%, close valve B by 1% but it wasn't It would have been non-trivial to insert a bug on the main control computer (it would have been detected) and the remote telemetry cards were always being moved around so you never knew which was where so they couldn't easily be sabotaged either.