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NSA Sent Coded Messages From Its Twitter To Communicate With Foreign Spies (gizmodo.com)
Matt Novak reports via Gizmodo: During the first Cold War, American and British spies would sometimes place coded messages in newspaper classified ads to communicate with each other. And according to new reports in the New York Times and The Intercept, the National Security Agency (NSA) has updated the tactic, using its public Twitter account to send secret messages to at least one Russian spy. That's just one relatively small detail in much more salacious articles about NSA and CIA agents traveling to Germany in an effort to recover cyberweapons that had been stolen from U.S. intelligence agencies. A Russian spy allegedly offered up the stolen cyber tools to the Americans in exchange for $10 million, eventually lowering his price to just $1 million. The Russian spy allegedly claimed to even have dirt on President Trump.
According to the reports, the unnamed Russian met with U.S. spies in person in Germany, and the NSA sometimes communicated with the Russian spy by sending roughly a dozen coded messages from the NSA's Twitter account. The one important question: Were the messages sent via direct message or were they sent out as public tweets? The New York Times report leaves some ambiguity, but according to James Risen in The Intercept they were very public.
According to the reports, the unnamed Russian met with U.S. spies in person in Germany, and the NSA sometimes communicated with the Russian spy by sending roughly a dozen coded messages from the NSA's Twitter account. The one important question: Were the messages sent via direct message or were they sent out as public tweets? The New York Times report leaves some ambiguity, but according to James Risen in The Intercept they were very public.
The Russian spy allegedly claimed to even have dirt on President Trump.
Who doesn't?
Have gnu, will travel.
it's Fash the Nation!
I'm not surprised that Twitter / Facebook and so on are used like this, the Bot Nets have been using them for Command and Control for ages. But why use the "official" NSA Twitter Twaddle? It's pedestrian to discover who accesses specific sites... Why not something more benign like Britney Speers Twitter?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Turns out that's the origin of the word "classified" for secret documents. Lol.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
This uses new technology but a very old idea. Numbers stations have long been used to send coded messages to spies, who decided them with one time pads.
How the fuck do you return 'cyberweapons'?
Peace of mind comes without Twitter.
I repeat: Peace of mind comes without Twitter..
So here are the facts on Russian collusion...
Evidence of collusion with Russia
Hillary Clinton (D) paid Russia for dossier on Trump
State Dept worked with Clinton and Russia on dossier (See Grassley memo)
Russian dossier used by FBI/DOJ to get illegal wireptap on Trump campaign
Adam Schiff (D) attempted to get nude photos of Trump from Russia
Mark Warner (D) attempted to get information on Trump and "not leave paper trail"
NSA attempted to get naked photos of Trump (see this story)
No evidence of collusion with Russia
Trump
Carter Page, followed by all the government since 2013 and they haven't found anything to charge him with. They seem to be telling us going to Russia is now illegal.
Special council looking into collusion with Russia
Looking at Trump, using info from Comey (FBI colluded with Russia) which originally came from Clinton (who colluded with Russia).
Not looking at the LONG list of people who DID collude with Russia.
Now what is the average US citizen supposed to think about their government about all this?
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They're just giving instructions to the French Resistance. Vive la France.
The "cyberweapons" is a bullshit cover story.
NSA and CIA agents traveling to Germany in an effort to recover cyberweapons that had been stolen from U.S. intelligence agencies. A Russian spy allegedly offered up the stolen cyber tools to the Americans in exchange for $10 million, eventually lowering his price to just $1 million. The Russian spy allegedly claimed to even have dirt on President Trump.
Why would you pay anything for a copy of "stolen cyber tools"?!?!?! The Russians aren't about to give the CIA their last copy no matter how they're paid, and the NSA and the CIA already have them and don't need another copy.
After the transaction, the CIA gets a disk of "stolen cyber tools" that they already have, and the Russian still have them too.
So it's a bullshit cover story.
So what did the CIA pay for?
This was the CIA trying to get dirt on Trump - no more, no less.
Nothing new here. All the worlds spy agencies have been using numbers stations for half a century or more. They use ham or shortwave stations that anyone with a receiver can hear and (hopefully) only the spyâ(TM)s know what to do with the strings of numbers being read off.
Oblivious tech is used for obvious things. Oh no!
In other news, you're all morons.
This is getting unusual: the New York Times paper is not obviously anti-russian.
The one important question: Were the messages sent via direct message or were they sent out as public tweets? The New York Times report leaves some ambiguity, but according to James Risen in The Intercept they were very public.
Of course they're public. The whole point is that no one can see who is receiving the messages. They're coded, of course, so only the intended recipient will know what they mean, but possibly even the sender doesn't know who that person is. If DMs were used, that would entirely defeat the purpose: might as well use a secure communications app. The points of classified ads in the past, or tweets today, is that they can be read anonymously, even from a public computer terminal without typing in any login credentials.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Slashdot should have articles on stuff like this, y'know?
I-ay, avehay the irtday on umptray! Eepay apetay!
You are welcome on my lawn.
You'd think that people working for an intelligence agency would be intelligent themselves but these knuckleheads from CIA and NSA just paid a "Russian spy" hundreds of thousands of dollars for a dark and grainy video of a guy with two girls where you couldn't even hear the audio. This video was supposed to be proof of Donald Trump soliciting prostitutes. Lol
Covfefe!
"Attention Falcon: The spaghetti is in the colander! Repeat, the spaghetti is in the colander!
That is all."
Use Britney Spears Instagram feed.
http://www.businessinsider.com/russian-hackers-turla-communicate-malware-britney-spears-instagram-comment-2017-6
Nothing new, During WWII the BBC broadcast daily public coded messages to be heard in Europe. There is an excellent book by Leo Marks titled "Between Silk and Cyanide" that details the extraordinary efforts the British made to communicate with their networks using encrypted messages.
Spies TWITTER YOU!
(oblig and all that)
The problem here is that Carter Page appears to have been one of *our* spies working for the FBI who helped bust some Russian scammers with a wiretapped binder and there are plenty of reports about it. He also didn't work for Trump for very long at all. You're relying on a lot of secret "evidence" and ignoring how people are leaking rumors to various media outlets to "corroborate" themselves. You do realize how easy it is to pull that sort of nonsense off, right? I mean, right here on Slashdot, we infamously saw the post making that point by saying that one could just as easily claim to have secret evidence you wet the bed... mere days before the dossier about prostitutes peeing on Obama's bed went public.
Meanwhile, we have FBI agents who join that team texting each other about secret societies, insurance policies and telling us that Weiner's laptop was full of classified Hillary emails and they really reopened the investigation just to seize them from the NYPD and declare it a nothingburger before that could get out. Apparently they were too dumb to actually read any of the emails and notice classification markers on thousands of emails, so Comey goes on and mumbles that it's just "a few portion markings" (never mind she'd already lied to the FBI about that, but no need for 18 USC 1001 charges for lying about improper storage of classified material, apparently) and they also hide the fact that Obama knew the whole time, as fact which Hillary's lawyer Cheryl Mills made clear. You can see his press department lying about that around 44:55 in the linked video.
Anyhow, as should have been obvious to anyone with half a brain, Muller isn't going to come out with a damned thing until the mid-terms, at which time we'll start to see various leaks and whatnot building up to a climax right at the election. Not that it helps much, there simply aren't all that many seats for Dems to pick up, but then again, I shouldn't underestimate the crazy tricks...
There is plenty of dirt to collect on Trump, its slowly building to the end for him and the alt right traitors who make up the sort of desperate lies you are pedalling. Sad.
If they're coded messages, it literally doesn't matter.
In fact, that's kind of the point of encrypted and coding - people can read your message AND STILL not understand what it says.
Sending as direct message would link the two parties conclusively. Putting a public message doesn't - literally anyone who viewed it could have been the intended recipient and there's no way to tell who it was.
Stupid headline/summary/article is stupid.
Any agency that wanted to get a message to an agent who can't reveal themselves would often find the best way to do so would be to publicly broadcast a coded message using a system that only that agent has the facility / knowledge / key to understand.
Everything from numbers stations, to messages in newspapers, to Twitter... it's the right way to do it without revealing the message, or the intended recipient.
Encrypt the message. Don't try to obfuscate/obscure the medium. Anything radio can be captured, anything visible can be photographed, anything written can be intercepted, anything electronic can be sniffed, anything audible canbe recorded. Pretty much the entire basis of things like TLS, SSH, etc. - who cares if the underlying medium is secure... form a secure channel over it using methods that EXPECT it to be actively monitored by an enemy (e.g. Diffie-Hellman, etc.).
One Russian spy secretly negotiating with the NSA is now being called "the Russians".
Way to go The Intercept. It is very sad that Snowden trusted one journalist with his leaks. For a while there hasn't been any decent publications from his archive and it seems like this will be the end of it.
This makes Wikileaks more relevant every day.
in Pyongyang today.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
...pays money to "buy back" stolen hacking tools. The cover story is obviously a lie.
Since when does the NSA run human intelligence operations? I guess when your budget is classified you can just do whatever the hell you want.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Spies use all kinds of things to pass coded messages. Should we really splash examples all over the media? I don't see any benefit, just potential harm.
Anybody here know that during WWII the Allies sent coded messages via BBC radio broadcasts? This is not rocket surgery boys & girls. Sending via a tweet hides the possible recipients & is probably why the Intercept is upset, Putin does not know who the mole is.
So, what to they use for DOMESTIC spies?
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
covfefe : Dude, call me. I've got the stuff.