Slashdot Mirror
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.
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!
Peace of mind comes without Twitter.
I repeat: Peace of mind comes without Twitter..
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.
Numbers stations have long been used to send coded messages to spies, who decided them with one time pads.
Has this ever been verified? It seems a pretty likely possibility, especially when you look at the location of many of these stations. But does anyone really know?
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?
I-ay, avehay the irtday on umptray! Eepay apetay!
You are welcome on my lawn.
Intelligence services will usually keep a foreign agent in place, where they can follow the flow of information. And now, with the change in Page's legal team, it appears that he's cut a deal with the FBI to give up someone more senior.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Oh dear, you sad semi-literate Trumpie, you missed all the references (not one of them is Reddit). Here they are so you can improve your reading skills.
1) The Guardian - Trump Tower meeting with Russians treasonous, Bannon says in explosive book
2) NBC - A Panama tower carries Trump’s name and ties to organized crime
3) Global Witness - Narco-A-Lago: Money Laundering At The Trump Ocean Club Panama
4) The Guardian - Trumps Panama tower used for money laundering by condo owners, reports say
5) Sketchy Donald Trump Deal Eyed For Ties To Iran | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC
6) The New Yorker - Donald Trump’s Worst Deal:
The President helped build a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation engineered by oligarchs tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard
7) NPR - The New Yorker Uncovers Trump Hotels Ties To Corrupt Oligarch Family
8) Business Insider - Dossier author Christopher Steele: Trumps hotel and land deals with Russians need to be examined
9) New York Times - Trump Associate Boasted That Moscow Business Deal ‘Will Get Donald Elected’
10) The Washington Post - Trump’s company had more contact with Russia during campaign, according to documents turned over to investigators
11) Slate - An Intriguing Link Between the Mueller Investigation, Trump, and Alleged Money Laundering
12) GQ - Inside Donald Trumps Election Night War Room
13) Politico - Trump’s mob-linked ex-associate gives $5,400 to campaign
14) Raw Story - Longtime Trump business partner ‘told family he knows he and POTUS are going to prison’: report
15) The Spectator - Forget Charlottesville - Russia Is Still The True Trumps True Scandal
16) McClatchy - Donald Trump and the mansion that no one wanted. Then came a Russian fertilizer king
17) New York Times - Tracking the Yachts and Jets of the Mega-Rich
18) McClatchy - Trump, Russian billionaire say they’ve never met,
Sorry, nothing from Breitbart or RU.com.
There is plenty of evidence against Carter Page that we know about. The evidence we don't know about, which was used to get a FISA warrant against him, is in the Intelligence Committee Memo that the Democrats want to put out but Donald Trump refuses to allow. But as I said, what we know is plenty:
https://www.politico.com/magaz...
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm well-paid, my friend. Well-paid.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If the Democrats on the HPSCI had evidence that FISA warrants were obtained under un-impeachable circumstances then, why did they wait to publish their findings until after the Republicans published their summary memo? Really. Why wait?
How and why could the the dossier (have you read it?) be used, in any capacity, without un-impeachable verification, to get a FISA warrant to surveil a presidential campaign and administration?
What will you say when Trump's administration uses FISA warrants to surveil the Democrat candidate in 2020?
In all seriousness:
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.).
Yes, I've read it, and you can too. Here is the full text:
https://www.documentcloud.org/...
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
Ok, you've read the "dossier." Then you know it looks like something from the Onion, You should know it's still in "largely unverified" status (meaning it names people and places that really exist but the events described in it are not verified).
We do not know who Steele's sources were. We do not know whether they were from the FSB, FBI/CIA, DOJ, U.S. Department of State, etc.
I'm not going to click on the Newspeak link. Why don't you provide a summary of what's at the link?
What will you say when the Trump administration uses a "dossier" to surveil their opposition in the 2020 election?
In all seriousness:
Check out Spycraft by Robert Wallace, H. Keith Melton and Henry R. Schlesinger it is well sourced and quite informative.
Long story short, yes this use of number stations has been confirmed by multiple sources, including operators and "users". It is a well known, and confirmed, fact that a Cuban spyring operating out of Florida (IIRC) was controlled by a number station.
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
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.