Snowden Used Social Engineering To Get Classified Documents

cold fjord sends this news from Reuters: "Edward Snowden used login credentials and passwords provided unwittingly by colleagues ... to access some of the classified material he leaked. ... A handful of agency employees who gave their login details to Snowden were identified, questioned and removed from their assignments. ... Snowden may have persuaded between 20 and 25 fellow workers at the NSA regional operations center in Hawaii to give him their logins and passwords by telling them they were needed for him to do his job as a computer systems administrator. ... People familiar with efforts to assess the damage to U.S. intelligence caused by Snowden's leaks have said assessments are proceeding slowly because Snowden succeeded in obscuring some electronic traces of how he accessed NSA records. ... The revelation that Snowden got access to some of the material he leaked by using colleagues' passwords surfaced as the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee approved a bill intended in part to tighten security over U.S. intelligence data. One provision of the bill would earmark a classified sum of money ... to help fund efforts by intelligence agencies to install new software designed to spot and track attempts to access or download secret materials without proper authorization.'"

Comments

Fire them

[sunderland56]

Anyone working in the security field who gives up their password is an idiot, and should be fired.

Re:Fire them

[Qzukk]

What kind of an idiot gives their passowrd to an administrator?

Not Terry Childs!

Re:Fire them

[TheCarp]

What org was it that wrote the SELinux extentions? Oh right the NSA.

I took an SELinux class a while back, it is not necessarily the case that this is true. Its true in all my environments, but, I have never seen any environment where SELinux was actually used.

The default policy on most distros the "Targeted" policy is pretty light weight. Its the horror movie equivalent of scream. Fully locked down SELinux is more like....faces of death.

It is entirely possible to have a system administrator who does NOT have that kind of access under the NSAs mandatory access control model. That doesn't mean they have it implemented that way, but, it is possible that they could, the tools exist; and they wrote them.

Re:Fire them

[somersault]

Yep. There is literally no other way of stopping this kind of secret government behaviour than kicking up a massive shitstorm before it gets too out of hand. Boohoo, the guy did something illegal while outing you for all your illegal and immoral bullshit. Everyone else in the world would give him a medal, but the government (apparently) think that pointing out that he stole some passwords will make us hate him?

Re:Fire them

[s.petry]

I have never seen any environment where SELinux was actually used.

I worked in DOD for more than a decade, we used SE Linux from the time it was available. Before that, we used LAUS. If you don't use it or know people that do, why are you going to make false claims like "Fully locked down SELinux is more like....faces of death."? If you never used it, you obviously should not be making bogus claims. Fully locked down and properly configured SELinux is a nightmare for auditors, not admins.

It is entirely possible to have a system administrator who does NOT have that kind of access under the NSAs mandatory access control model. That doesn't mean they have it implemented that way, but, it is possible that they could, the tools exist; and they wrote them.

No offense, but your second sentence contradicts your first claim. Is it not more likely that where he was working they were not using a properly configured access control system? System being architecture, implementation, and auditing to ensure people don't break things.

Probably because I have lived the life, I can speak first hand to knowing that not all DOD places were the same. I happened to build and design the first classified networked systems off of a military base (yeah yeah, big whoop wanna fight about it?). My primary responsibility was building and designing these systems, writing tools for the auditors, and writing tools to ensure everything worked all the time. At the same time, I spoke often with agents that had other customers that did nothing, or, used good old fashioned someone watching a person at a single terminal and writing things down manually. (no SELinux, no tools, no automation).

By Snowden's own claims he had access to things he should not. That to me indicates that the contractor he was working for had no real security in place. Anything I can bypass by killing syslogd or removing history is not "real", sorry. SELinux is the answer, but it's time consuming to get right and takes a dedicated regular staff of good auditors and admins to maintain. If you cut corners to save money and lack the proper staff, of course people can do things you don't know about. If you are doing illegal things that your staff questions, you just fucked yourself no matter how much staff you have.

Re:Fire them

[Dunbal]

No, it's a failed character assassination attempt. It backfires, and proves just how stupid 20 odd NSA employees can be. The goal was obviously to try to taint Snowden to show that he "broke the law" to get the data he later released. What it ends up showing is how readily alleged "security officials" are willing to hand anyone the keys to the operation.

I'm sure Snowden is no saint, however his agenda was to either confirm what he suspected and/or let the "cat out of the bag" about flagrant abuse of power by government. Even if his method was wrong, it does not make governments' behavior any less wrong. And the fact that government is trying to use its power and influence to minimize, trivialize, ignore or otherwise deflect attention from the revelations (with NO intention to change their behavior) is far, far worse than Snowden asking someone for their password who should have known better than to give it to him in the first place.

Sucks to Have Worked with Snowden...

[DexterIsADog]

...though his revelations of the intelligence gathering practices of the NSA are a gift that just keeps on giving.

Funny that the people he duped to obtain some of the information are being relieved of their jobs (though not their lives, presumably), but the people participating in the overreach won't suffer any consequences.

This is a training problem.

[Remus Shepherd]

In other news, there are a lot of stupid employees at the NSA regional operations center in Hawaii.

If the NSA had trained its employees competently, they wouldn't be so naive as to give their login passwords to anyone, even an admin.

Not shocked

[TheCarp]

As someone who has been a sysadmin for years, I can say, unequivocally, I never ask people for their passwords. If I need access to your account, I can have it. If I really need to do an end to end test, I can probably do it by swapping out your password hash and then restoring it so I never need your password. If that can't be done, i will change it and then reset it so you have to change it again.

Yet... despite this... from time to time people just.... send me their passwords.

"Account X on machine Y with password Z can't login, can you check it?"

So no shock at all here.

Re:Snowden is a hero!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree comrade! Snowden deserves to be recognized as a Hero of the Soviet Union , but since those are no longer available a Hero of Russia will have to do. Perhaps the FSB nee KGB will someday announce his promotion! Glory to the workers of the Cheka for this achievement! We stand in solidarity with those that would smash capitalism and the bourgeois internet! Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat!

Who would have suspected?

[nbauman]

Why shouldn't they trust him? He was polygraphed.

FTA:

"In the classified world, there is a sharp distinction between insiders and outsiders. If you've been cleared and especially if you've been polygraphed, you're an insider and you are presumed to be trustworthy," said Steven Aftergood, a secrecy expert with the Federation of American Scientists.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/08/net-us-usa-security-snowden-idUSBRE9A703020131108

This Thing Reeks

[cffrost]

Excerpts from Reuters "article:"

(Reuters) - Former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden used login credentials and passwords provided unwittingly by colleagues at a spy base in Hawaii to access some of the classified material he leaked to the media, sources said.

Snowden may have persuaded between 20 and 25 fellow workers at the NSA regional operations center in Hawaii to give him their logins and passwords by telling them they were needed for him to do his job as a computer systems administrator, a second source said.

While the U.S. government now believes it has a good idea of all the data to which Snowden could have accessed, investigators are not positive which and how much of that data Snowden actually downloaded, the sources said.

This garbage has the same quality sourcing as the hit-piece published by The New York Times and The New Yorker that spread unsubstantiated rumors claiming that Snowden had given classified documents (i.e., unpublished material) to Chinese and Russian officials.

Re:If the story is true

[ogdenk]

That point was about 6 months ago. On Slashdot, where there's a pretty vocal community who thinks Bluray ISOs of the latest Hollywood releases "want to be free,"

Not really. I just won't buy BluRay releases until the MPAA get their fingers out of my hardware and remove DRM. The pirates have the better product that I can use in ways that I want to use them rather than their "our way or the highway" approach that isn't even backed by law in a lot of ways, just draconian corporate policy. So as far as I'm concerned, studios that sign up with them are complicit idiots that deserve to burn right along with them.

So yeah, as far as I'm concerned I would love to sit and watch that whole industry burn. Through illegal means if necessary. I lost any sympathy I had for them about a decade ago.

any secret data reveal is presumed to be some kind of a public service.

Any secret data that involves the government targeting Americans as if they were criminals with no due process IS ABSO-F**KING-LUTELY a public service. His personal motives don't matter to me much. He's done a good thing by helping to throw a monkey wrench (or at least a small screwdriver) in the gears driving the New World Order.

Any blow against tyranny is a good one regardless of the initial motives. If they were worried about their "national secrets" maybe they should gather these secrets legitimately according to the laws of the United States of America without attempting to redefine the English language to justify their illegal, immoral acts against the people.

Snowden long ago exposed himself as just a guy interested in finding as much as he could find about government secrets, then indiscriminately dumping that information on the press.

If this was true, either way, who gives a shit? I don't care about Snowden the man. I don't care about his personality. I don't care if he's a douche. Regardless, it was something that needed to be done.

He's not whistleblower,

Maybe not intentionally, but he certainly is. And any chaos and instability he creates I view as a positive and necessary thing. Our government needs to be reigned in and taught exactly who they hell they work for and who owns them again.

I'm not mad that both the NSA and CIA dropped the ball. I'm glad they are incompetent. I'm glad they did it. Folks that incompetent that are willing to break the law (and rarely face consequences) shouldn't be in control of the biggest spy machine on the planet if they can't keep simple checks and balances and well...... follow the law. There never should have been so much *scope* to infiltrate to begin with.

I find it hilarious that folks want to crucify Snowden for breaking the law but think the NSA just needs to get better at it and adjust some procedures (which will be ignored anyway).

These people are uncaring, brutal tyrants that care nothing about your freedom or securing your rights. They are there to subvert them and therefore have no legitimate right to exist. Period.

Re:Snowden is a hero!

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly, disliking an overreaching government that wants nothing but control over it's slaves makes you a socialist now. Because, you know, socialists are totally against those things. Either that or you've been listening to way too much US government propaganda lately and the irony is lost on you.

C'mon people! Who has been telling the truth?

[Geste]

Who has been telling the truth since June? Snowden.

I am amazed that so many are taking this sniff-test-doubtful story at face value and debating whether the engineered sysadmins should be fired or shot.

Ain't it funny how these "sources" might layer on a bit of devious sociopathy, to try to make Snowden fit the role of criminal wrecker?

Among the principals (NSA, GHCQ, executive branch, most politicians, Snowden) it is pretty much only Snowden's testimony and participation that hasn't been full to the gills with half-truths, contradictions, lies and attempts at character assassination.

Oh and how devious:

"People familiar with efforts to assess the damage to U.S. intelligence caused by Snowden's leaks have said assessments are proceeding slowly because Snowden succeeded in obscuring some electronic traces of how he accessed NSA records."

Read: "You ought to believe that Snowden did more than totally embarrass us, but he is so devious that you'll ave to take that on faith!"

"Sources said". Blech

NO CLEMENCY FOR FEINSTEIN