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Snowden Spoofed Top Officials' Identity To Mine NSA Secrets
schnell writes "As government investigators continue to try to figure out just how much data whistleblower Edward Snowden had access to, MSNBC is reporting that Snowden used his sysadmin privileges to assume the user profiles of top NSA officials in order to gain access to the most sensitive files. His sysadmin privileges also enabled him to do something other NSA users can't — download classified files from NSAnet onto a thumb drive. 'Every day, they are learning how brilliant [Snowden] was,' said a former U.S. official with knowledge of the case. 'This is why you don't hire brilliant people for jobs like this. You hire smart people. Brilliant people get you in trouble.'"
"Brilliant people get you in trouble.'"
More like "Brilliant people expose the trouble you're currently in".
The security-state here keeps saying "if you don't have anything to hide, then you don't need privacy"
Well, if the NSA weren't doing shit that warranted whistleblowers, they wouldn't have the problems they currently do.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Umm, ok, now you have to be brilliant to "sudo su ".
This guy was a sysadmin. He had physical level access to the hardware. Anybody who is in that job and is competent can do what Snowden did. (or am I missing some as yet undisclosed salient detail?)
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
That explains why they really, really, really wanted to get their claws into him.
Forget the extreme negligence of morality of what they were doing, forget the fact that he leaked those secrets to international press.
It's just 100% pride. And I bet those top officials are the ones gunning for him.
Until they realize that what they were doing was unacceptable, this will continue.
And I expect it will continue for a very long time..
What makes him -not- a whistleblower? He spotted illegal actions from his client (NSA) and used his privileges to prove him right.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
"This is why you don't hire brilliant people for jobs like this. You hire smart people. Brilliant people get you in trouble." -- a former U.S. official with knowledge of the case.
Um... no. What is described in TFA is not "brilliant" at all, but a necessary part of being a sysadmin: you have control over user profiles.
The fact that the "former official" does not seem to realize this does not lead us to conclude that Snowden was brilliant... but rather that the mentioned official was anything but.
Sometimes I feel that these "former U.S. officials" and "anonymous staff members" should STFU. It just seems like they use their anonymity to say random shit that will create headlines and stroke their ego. The "don't hire brilliant people" quotation is just stupid. No one that would have to be responsible for their words would say that.
People with integrity are not going to be working for the NSA. Kinda runs counter to what they do.
This isn't brilliance, this is just poor security. This is systems that had a vulnerable audit trail, or didn't bother auditing enough, or created records no one ever looked at. Surely user snowden su-ing to some top official throws a red flag somewhere, right? If not, why not?
Inside the NSA is probably an amusing place to bea fly on the wall at the moment. All sorts of new procedures to try to stop someone else doing the same thing. However: it won't work, any defences that a man can put in place can be circumvented by another man, especially one working on the inside. They can make it hard, but not impossible - at least if they want their systems to remain useful. They have, at some level, to trust people to be able to operate.
The only way that the NSA can stop future embarassing revelations is for it to behave in a reasonable and moral way. That means a complete change of culture.
I did not say ''behave in a legal way'' since corrupt laws can easily be written.
It sounds like despite the initial protestations of how he'd exaggerated his abilities, and those of the surveillance program ... it's all proving to be true.
That his sysadmin privileges let him access stuff which was much more classified doesn't change that the system is capable of doing this, and likely is on a large scale.
So we've got a wide-reaching, in cases probably illegal system which can and does tap into everything -- and apparently the amount of oversight and controls they have on this is very limited.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Explain how any whistleblower is supposed to expose something if they are not allowed to make information public that the public does not already have access to?
According to 99.99999% of the population. Yes.
Which of course makes most of us here freaking geniuses.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
All these people "with knowledge of the case" better watch-out they don't go off-message or they could find themselves hunted as whistle-blowers too, but they'll be OK as long as they keep talking about Snowden and not crimes he exposed.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
Well, which sounds better as a defense?
1) We got hacked by methods any average or better than average sysadmin could use. Thus our entire architecture is at risk at this can happen multiple more times. We have no adequate defense against this, and are thoroughly screwed.
or
2) We got hacked by a BRILLIANT HACKER! No one could have foreseen the ninja-like moves he used against us! Now that we've closed the obscure loophole that he used, the only flaw in our otherwise perfect system, our files are safe for eternity! Yay us!
It seems like they're going with #2.
Manning stole and leaked operational information that potentially put lives at risk by exposing agents in the field and/or operational plans in the field.
Except that in the Manning leak, the military or intelligence agencies have yet to point to a single agent or operation in the field that was stopped due to the leak. They've just repeatedly asserted this point without proof, and that means significant numbers of Americans believe them.
I am officially gone from
Technically they are not supposed to go immediately to the public. Military, Government, and DOD people are supposed to use the chain of command first. Unfortunately, this does not work in most cases since the chain of command in a corrupt organization is also corrupt. Numerous court cases and stories are to be found regarding how internal whistle blowers are treated (sometimes killed with their whole family, etc...)
What Snowden did in this case is correct. Not going public mind you, but going to journalists who are supposed to be working for the public's interests.
What I, and many others, find so interesting is that our media has become so corrupt that we have to have alternative news sources which hold the original 'credo of journalism' in mind when working. I'm sure if he turned the data over to the NY Post, he would have been in jail and the public would still have no knowledge.
Lengthy chain to get to the point, but the point is that he did not go "public". He went to journalists, and did so correctly in my never so humble opinion. Part of the journalism credo is to determine what to release to the public in order to present the story while protecting the Government.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
So much wrong with all of this...
We can see why in this quotation from TFA which you mentioned:
This is irrational and IMHO just plain ignorant.
How could you reach such a non-sensical conclusion? It requires a misunderstanding of both the technical difficulty of the tasks Snowden accomplished *and* an Asperger-level understanding of what motivates humans to perform.
The error: Interpreting Snowden's behavior as something 'difficult'...
What Snowden did was, on a technical level, something most people at or above his paygrade in IT could do. It is something **some** of us here on /. could do with little effort.
Snowden isn't some code-cracking wizard. Most people on /. could spoof users (or just steal login info) with some work.
Hopping a fence to get to a private pool is not 'innovative' or 'brilliant' thinking...that's all Snowden did.
It's not like he's DVD John....
Second, Snowden's info was *not new information*
We all knew since the PATRIOT ACT that the govt could do this...Bush renewed a domestic spying order to the NSA every 45 days after 9/11.
"NSA has massive database of American's phone calls"is the headline
So, Snowden is either *a full on spy for Russia/global Oligarchs* or *being duped into releasing info by the same*
He's not a hero, he's not a whistleblower, he's a misguided dupe that got taken advantage of, at best...
I've written this before, with links just like now...if you want to disagree, if you want to claim Snowden *did* release valuable information and not just technical details for things we already knew existed...you have to show evidence.
Snowden's info was of no use...and we didn't need any of this to have a "national conversation about privacy"
hundreds of thousands of Americans vehemently do activism to guard our privacy...these are every day people...we've been active since 9/11 and the Patriot Act and before...
Thank you Dave Raggett
It sounds like he abused his privileges to confirm his suspicions, and then took a course of action. Which is the right approach, depending on the suspicions.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
This isn't about competence or incompetence. It's about putting as negative a spin as possible on Snowden.
Float a lot of trial balloons, make sure negative things get out there via anonymous sources, even if rebutted the next day, then the "traitor" contingent can forever quote the negative and leave the detailed rebuttals to others, which no one will read.
To wit: in this thread, Manning is excoriated as a traitor for releasing all the documents unredacted, but Manning did not - that was accomplished when professional journalists from the Guardian published the passphrase for an encrypted file.
You need to hire some of these "brilliant" people so that you don't get snowed by a Snowden. By all accounts he accomplished what he did by having incompetent management above him. This was a management problem, and one that you knew better about, or should have known better about - if you had some of those brilliant people who knew what they were doing in management!
You're assuming he had access to the hardware that held in information in an unencrypted state. One would assume that the NSA protects this level of information with layers of encryption to try and prevent all of it from residing together on hardware in an unencrypted state. I would speculate that he need to perform the equivalent "sudo -su kalexander" in order to convince the system to give him the files unencrypted.
One would assume, but one would be wrong apparently. According to several of the linked articles, the NSA state of security is fantastically sophisticated in many ways, but stone aged in others. In short, there is an entire class of sysadmins that the NSA has no good way of keeping track of, and worse, they don't even necessarily know who they all are...
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
" 'This is why you don't hire brilliant people for jobs like this. You hire smart people. Brilliant people get you in trouble.'"
No, what happens is when you do shit that shocks the conscience, someone, somewhere, is going to expose you for the douchebag that you are.
Stop being a douchebag.
--
BMO
Snowden's abusing his powers is an act of civil disobedience. The same tatics were used by Ghandi and the civil rights movement. It's a wrong that warrants a "tsk tsk, don't do that" and a stern look. He did it to expose evils so great and widespread that it would be hard to figure out which of the hundreds involved who merit it should be executed for treason first. That's not shoot the messenger here.
So the whole "anybody could get access to this data at any time, even without a court order" is really more like "anyone with the appropriate privileges, which is limited to a select number of analysis, can access these records, which are protected by a court order. Except, of course, the sysadmin who breaks all of the rules, steals the credentials of authorized analysis, and then downloads whatever he wants.
Short of giving one key to a judge in a two key system and tying up an entire justice department staff to baby site every single access, there isn't a way around this particular scenario. It's baked into the whole clearance and trust model.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Doesn't change the facts, though, does it? Despicable scum or patriotic hero, he leaked proof of illegal surveillance programs. If you want to criticize someone, why are you picking snowden? He's just the messenger. Regardless what the law says, it's obvious whistleblowing sometimes requires one to get into things he isn't supposed to know about. That comes with the territory.
Given their track record, anything the NSA says should be considered to be a lie. Therefore, if they say Snowden used his 1337 h4x0r skillz to break the rules, it is a safe bet that he did not do anything of the sort and the NSA is just fabricating a story to pacify lawmakers asking how this could happen. Since they commit perjury in front of Congress with impunity, lying to reporters wouldn't even be a blip on a NSA spin-doctor's moral radar.
So, having a way to change your identity to another users is brilliant?
All System Admins must be brilliant!
That is certainly the opinion of most sysadmins :-)
What they _really_ want are sociopaths; people (Men) that have no empathy for others and kinda get off on having great power and lending a hand in bringing suffering and grief to 'things' they have no more sympathy for than ants under their magnifying glass.
The greatest enemy of the NSA, et al is conscience.
There has to be more than 700 people who consider that to be simple.
Yeah, hire that incompetent idiot who will design the security precautions wrong in the first place. That'll work a lot better.
Can't do that, he left three years ago and is now working for something like northrop grumman or bechtel .... selling platforms to the NSA...
I'll point you to a huge corruption case currently ongoing in Quebec, It's a textbook case of having internal affair that is not working properly and become so useless that it's not even a stopping block to the corruption system. Stories like the construction contract in the city of laval where internal affair was in the system of Montreal where internal affair was flushed.... Yeah, it's not always that easy.
Don't forget, she leaked "collateral murder." That is whistleblowing if ever a whistle has been blown.
.: Semper Absurda
A properly compartmented system doesn't have root.
A security manager (that doesn't have access to installation tools, network, operations or storage, but has lots of system activity logs)
A systems engineer (that doesn't have access to user files or security manager functions)
An operational staff (that doesn't have access to user files, security manager functions, OR installation tools)
A network engineer (that doesn't have access to any of the previous three).
And frequently, a storage engineer that doesn't have access to any of the previous 4).
Thus, separation of duty. Improper access always raises an alarm. A violation requires collusion between 3 or more people - MUCH easier to detect.
It is usually the security manager that authorizes new users. The operations staff may initiate the installation of those users - but it is still the security manager that enables them.
And yes, a storage engineer doesn't need access to user files - he may have his own files for testing/evaluation. But he can initiate load balancing that may cause user files to be relocated - but that does not give him access to the data.
This is a fundamental problem in almost every employer I have been connected with in the last 15 years. I have been employed 30+ years.
There is a great fear of intelligent emplyees so marginal managers hire even more-marginal employees for fear of being eclipsed. If should an intelligent employee manages to get in by understating their abilities but are detected later tend to be targeted and pushed out. There is a great fear by managers as being discovered as being incompetent. Add in sociopaths being promoted to managers just re-enforces this behaviour.
The result is I have witnessed companies squander abilities to quadruple their business in 1-2 years by poor management decisions, burying technical disasters that were easily detected & correctable at an early stage but then baloon into major disasters that cost them business. It is always the guy who predicted the disaster that gets targeted instead of the idiots that covered up the disaster in the making.
In engineering and software industries, I have seen a move to hire less educated, less experienced staff who will keep a low profile and not rock the boat. The result is in underperforming technology firms who rely more on marketing & sales than developing break-through technology and making it reliable.
The statement quoted is just a symptom of a deeper problem in today's high technology industries and even government bureaucracies.
I wouldn't say obviously. In my experience, decision makers work in a web of trust, and are completely blind sided by little technical details.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The best way to stop whistleblowers is to stop giving people a reason to want to blow the whistle.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
And exactly when do you think this was different? When Walter Cronkite was alive? When Ogg told Grog what happened to Paris the other night?
Is this way, was this way, will always be this way.
I’m sorry, no. Things most definitely were NOT always like this. When Walter Cronkite told you “that’s the way it is,” you could believe that he was reporting as accurately as he could, using material gathered by some of the best investigative journalists in the business, and most importantly, with little or no thought to whether the news he was reporting would negatively affect or offend the corporate bosses at CBS. There was a reason he was called “the most trusted man in America,” because he literally was just that, continually ranked in polls for trustworthiness above presidents, clergymen, fellow pundits, you name it. You don’t get that kind of reputation unearned.
Hard to imagine today, but back then the networks genuinely competed against each other for viewers, and news departments quickly became the most prestigious part of that struggle. There was very little editorializing, and almost none that wasn’t clearly labeled as such. The networks simply didn’t try to spin things a certain way as we see now. I suspect enforcement of the Fairness Doctrine had a lot to do with that, certainly it seems like the long decline of the American media began soon after the FCC decided to do away with the FD, along with many other existing useful regulations, such as the ones preventing industry consolidation into exactly the kind of huge media conglomerates we have today. Those long forgotten regulations were perhaps a big part of why the media in those days was so much more trustworthy than what we have now, although I can‘t prove this.
The end result is that today when I access any of the big American news organizations, I no longer believe I am getting the best information possible. Everything has to be taken with a grain of salt and a dollop of serious consideration regarding the parent company’s corporate stance on a given issue. More and more I find myself having to look at overseas sources (BBC, etc) to get any real feel for how things truly stand. It’s a sad state of affairs, and one that is very hard to convey to those born and raised in post-Reagan America. The news media in those days was far from perfect, but for trustworthiness, believability, accuracy, and absence of pervasive editorial slant, it was in general far superior to anything existing today.
The U.S. government is extremely corrupt, in many ways. It amazes me how often U.S. citizens joke about that, or change the subject, showing that they don't care.
They care. They change the subject because they feel powerless to change the corruption. Everyone they ever voted for turned out to have a hand in the cookie jar. And now the politicians no longer have a guilty look when caught. Instead, they demand to know why we didn't refill the cookie jar.