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Iranians Compromised a Highly Sensitive CIA Covert Communications System in 2011 by Using Google Search: Report (yahoo.com)
In 2011, Iran was able to use Google's search functionality to hack into a secret CIA communication network that was being used to contact agents and informants around the world -- a breach that appears to have triggered the exposure and execution of Agency sources in China and Iran, Yahoo News reported Friday.
Google didn't do anything but index web pages. The CIA controllers who didn't take the extremely simple and well-known measures to prevent indexing are the ones who were evil.
It's like saying car manufacturers are evil because someone used their product to rob a bank. Only the bank opened up the vault as a drive-through instead of actually securing it in any way.
TL;DR the CIA and Iran/China used convenient tools on the internet for spycraft. The CIA didn't use it prudently however, and got agents and informants killed due to their carelessness.
Most of the methods Iranians used would have been familiar to George Smiley. They looked at what the Americans obviously knew about Iran and figured out who could have told them. Then they leaned on those people and found out how they were communicating with the CIA.
This is where Google came in. These people were using phony websites to communicate with the CIA, and Iranian intelligence used Google to uncover similar websites. Then they hacked into those websites after which they had the keys to the kingdom.
It was the CIA's reliance on a bodged-together, vulnerable system that killed those assets. They used it even after they'd been warned by their own analysts in 2008 that it had been compromised.
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the compromised communications system tried to work by "security through obscurity"-- it used publicly-visible websites that were indexable and searchable, and didn't realize that once one was compromised, you could look at what was on it, and use well-crafted search terms to find them all.
That was actually in the news three years ago, but because of secrecy, the details of exactly what he warned about was left out. Now we know: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/ne... or https://www.thestate.com/news/...
"The CIA case involves former contractor John Reidy, who asserts he was punished after warning of a “catastrophic failure” in the spy agency’s operations. “It was a recipe for disaster,” Reidy wrote in his appeal, which was redacted by intelligence officials. “We had a catastrophic failure on our hands that would ensnare a great many of our sources.” His lawyer, Kel McClanahan, said Reidy was in charge of identifying foreign sources and systems in the telecommunications and computer fields that would be of interest to U.S. intelligence agencies.
Reidy also was responsible for developing intelligence operations against those targets, his lawyer said. McClanahan said his client is not permitted to discuss the case in more detail even with him because the CIA says the information is classified.
Reidy asserts that he first detected vulnerabilities in a CIA program in 2006, according to the appeal filing obtained by McClatchy. Signs of the problems included “anomalies in our operations and conflicting intelligence reporting that indicated several of our operations had been compromised,” he wrote, adding that he noticed “sources abruptly and without reason ceasing all communications with us.”
I feel ya, but when your sig says "In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you" then you have to admit there may be a reason for a slightly different usage of the word 'evil' that you just don't associate with, but is still valid for others to associate with.
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