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NYT: NSA Put 100,000 Radio Pathway "Backdoors" In PCs
retroworks writes "The New York Times has an interesting story on how NSA put transmitters into the USB input devices of PCs, allowing computers unplugged from the Internet to still be monitored, via radio, from up to 8 miles away. The article mainly reports NSA's use of the technology to monitor Chinese military, and minor headline reads 'No Domestic Use Seen.' The source of the data was evidently the leak from Edward J. Snowden."
Genuine question - where are these devices? Has any physical evidence of them been detected? Has anyone found one? I'm not sceptical that they did it, I think it's entirely possible. I'm just curious if there's any physical evidence that's been found yet...?
Ok, so I get the whole whistle blower thing but isn't this what the NSA is supposed to be doing? Spying on Americans is ok to get fussy about but why was this leaked and why doesn't the NYT realize that this actually does set back U.S. intelligence? Are they also going to release a story detailing what the Chinese are doing to spy on US from leaked Chinese intelligence?
Get a web developer
The NSA claims that it doesn't steal trade secrets from foreign companies in order to give US businesses a competitive edge. I suspect they are lying, given that it seems like they lie about everything, and that we already have reason to suspect they are lying about this in particular.
However, the implication is that it would be wrong or immoral for them to do so (unlike the French or Chinese who have no such qualms). E.g., in the article, we read:
At that session, Mr. Obama tried to differentiate between conducting surveillance for national security — which the United States argues is legitimate — and conducting it to steal intellectual property.
It goes on to quote Peter Singer saying that for the Chinese, economic advantage is part of national security.
Maybe the Chinese are right. And here's the thing - the U.S. already behaves as if securing economic advantages for our domestic industry is a critical interest. In trade negotiations, we ram our IP laws down the throats of every other country while dangling our domestic market in front of them, all the while never actually liberalizing agriculture at home. I don't understand why it's acceptable for us to promote our domestic businesses through trade diplomacy, but somehow it becomes unacceptable to do so through spying.
In my mind, we are trying to accomplish the same thing as the Chinese, just via a different means (or probably, via both means). Yet we criticize them as if we are somehow morally superior in the way we do it.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
of 100k devices in the field isn't supported by the article.
They infected 100k machines with software, most of them remotely.
(In that case, I consider the claimed number to be rather low even.)
It's right there in the first two paragraphs of TFA:
The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks.
While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet
Does the hardware have good Linux drivers?
News flash: Europeans spy on American companies.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.