Inside NSA's Efforts To Hunt Sysadmins

An anonymous reader writes "The Snowden revelations continue, with The Intercept releasing an NSA document titled 'I hunt sys admins' (PDF on Cryptome). The document details NSA plans to break into systems administrators' computers in order to gain access to the networks they control. The Intercept has a detailed analysis of the leaked document. Quoting: 'The classified posts reveal how the NSA official aspired to create a database that would function as an international hit list of sys admins to potentially target. Yet the document makes clear that the admins are not suspected of any criminal activity – they are targeted only because they control access to networks the agency wants to infiltrate. "Who better to target than the person that already has the ‘keys to the kingdom’?" one of the posts says.'"

Comments

This has gone beyond madness

[MrDoh!]

People need to be arrested for this. The people who ordered it done, wrote the reports, signed off on it, and anyone who did it. Ship some of them to various other countries for trials too, let everyone get into the action and let it be known to governments that this is not to be accepted.

Re:This has gone beyond madness

[rmdingler]

Agreed. I think the law enforcement officers that are charged with this task will arrive at the NSA when they finish arresting the bankers and brokers from the housing bubble derivatives scandal.

Re:This has gone beyond madness

[LookIntoTheFuture]

People need to be arrested for this.

Absolutely. It's astonishing that it hasn't happened already. Where's the line? What will it take to cross it? That is the scary part.

Re:This has gone beyond madness

[Ben4jammin]

Where's the line? What will it take to cross it?

I think the issue is that there was a line, and it got crossed. Once you cross it once, it becomes easier to cross, because hey it wasn't so bad last time.

Then, if you are put in relative isolation (enough for "group think" to take over) then it becomes easier still because you are validated for crossing it (dude we just saved lives by crossing the line...besides the "bad" guys are crossing it)

And this continues until you really can't even remember why you crossed it the first time, but there is so much danger out there you don't have time to really contemplate it, either. Until one day you realize that you are looking in the mirror each morning at someone who has become a stranger.

But by then it is too late...to challenge it now would precipitate an identity crises that isn't nearly as much fun as seeing yourself as the hero of the world.

Re:This has gone beyond madness

[drinkypoo]

But by then it is too late...to challenge it now would precipitate an identity crises that isn't nearly as much fun as seeing yourself as the hero of the world.

Congratulations, you just described the mode in which basically everyone operates. We all just tell ourselves we're being pragmatic as we sell out our futures. We don't live for today or tomorrow, but for an outcome that will never exist as long as we don't alter our behavior.

Perhaps it is rather time.....

[Anonymous Coward]

for some freelancers to fill some bodybags.

It is the only way to send them a timely message.

yawn.

[nblender]

I read through it. What I got was some full of himself mid-level network aware weenie who managed to get a job at NSA and get access to a vast trove of captured packet data trying to impress people with his vast knowledge of intarwebs protocols... I bet the smart people at NSA who are reading his lunatic ravings are wondering "who hired this asshole?"

Re:Hide in plain sight

[ravenlord_hun]

Small-time admins maybe. If one works as part of a larger team, automation and documentation is king - any such backdoors would get anyone into trouble, quick.

Smartest guy in the room

[Krazy Kanuck]

Sadly the NSA isn't, and creating these back doors is just creating a honey pot for those who are. Stop compromising our networks in the name of "national security".

The apologists will darken the skies

[Anonymous Coward]

As bad as such revelations are, what drives me nuts is all the apologists who crawl out of the woodwork every time one of these stories breaks. They have no end of justification for whatever the NSA or CIA does, anything from "I have nothing to hide" to "privacy is dead, stop bitching because the Good Guys are working t protect you".

I predict the kind of practice in TFA is going to keep mushrooming until someone uses it as a political weapon and then gets caught. Only then will the jock-sniffing Congress do something substantive about this mess.

If I were advising Hillary Clinton, I'd tell her to never touch another computer until her political career is over.

Re:Once compromised, it's a two way street..

[drinkypoo]

Advice to NSA admins, I know it is a cushy job, but find another job NOT in the government, the NSA is on a witch-hunt it's only a matter of time before they turn innocent bystanders into criminals.

Why would that help? A "former NSA admin" makes a convenient scapegoat. Come up with some employees who will strongly suggest that he was pushed out the door due to possible illegal activity and it's goat stew time

I love the irony of this...

[bwcbwc]

While NSA was hunting sysadmins, they were being pwned by...a sysadmin!

Yet another example of how NSA is too focused on offensive network capabilities (breaking into target systems) and doesn't pay enough attention to defense (strong crypto, open security models, etc.)

Re:Smert Shpionam!

[davecb]

Only slightly tongue-in-cheek, I fear the US is in the middle of a civil war they haven't noticed yet...