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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.
Peace of mind comes without Twitter.
I repeat: Peace of mind comes without Twitter..
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.
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.
Even if you think the NSA should offer patches for every bug they found the NSA doesn't agree.
If the NSA knows exactly what was stolen that does 3 things for them.
1) They know which tools are now useless (or if they work you might have hacked a honeypot).
2) The more you know about what was stolen the easier to figure out who stole it and how they did it.
3) You know which vulnerabilities you need to patch.
This was the CIA trying to get dirt on Trump - no more, no less.
According to the article the CIA was against the investigation because the head of the CIA is a Trump loyalist who didn't want dirt on the President. I wouldn't be surprised if the CIA was the source of the leak for this story.
I stole this Sig
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.
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.).