Slashdot Mirror
Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs In China and Germany
Advocatus Diaboli writes with this snippet from The Intercept: The National Security Agency has had agents in China, Germany, and South Korea working on programs that use "physical subversion" to infiltrate and compromise networks and devices, according to documents obtained by The Intercept. The documents, leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, also indicate that the agency has used under cover operatives to gain access to sensitive data and systems in the global communications industry, and that these secret agents may have even dealt with American firms. The documents describe a range of clandestine field activities that are among the agency's "core secrets" when it comes to computer network attacks, details of which are apparently shared with only a small number of officials outside the NSA.
When Snowden released documents that indicated that (amongst other things) Huawei had been compromised, I wondered if human intelligence or "social engineering" may have been used to obtain some passwords. If so, and if the Chinese govt. found out who (perhaps inadvertently) gave them away, that person would at the very least seen their employment terminated and perhaps even been terminated themselves!
Now with the frank admission that there are human spies at work in China for the NSA, I'm sure the Chinese govt. has redoubled their efforts to find (and kill) them. If so, then these leaks may be directly responsible for the deaths (probably after considerable torture) of individuals who, for whatever reason, were helping the U.S.
So, this is a very serious consequence of the leaks. Do you still agree that Snowden was justified in leaking all of this presumably without giving the U.S. advance warning of what he was going to release (so that they could get vulnerable individuals to safety?).