Archive for the ‘NSA’ Category

NSA in Unprecedented Hunt for KremlinGate Evidence – Observer

In my last column, I broke the news that Admiral Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, reportedly explained to his workforce last week that he had declined to assist President Donald Trump in his efforts to undermine the FBI and its counterintelligence investigation of the White House. As Rogers is said to have explained to agency personnel, There is no question that we have evidence of election involvement and questionable contacts with the Russians.

On this basis, Admiral Rogers confirmed the existence of highly classified signals intelligence which establishes some sort of collusion between Team Trump and the Kremlin during the 2016 election campaign. However, now that the Justice Department has appointed Robert Mueller special counsel charged with running the Russia investigation, NSA is apparently pulling out all the stops to track down any additional evidence which might be relevant to the expanded inquiry into KremlinGate.

Specifically, last week NSA is believed to have sent out an unprecedented order to the Directorate of Operations, the agencys largest unit. The DO, as insiders term it, manages all of NSAs SIGINT assets worldwide, making it the most important spy operation on earth. The email sent to every person assigned to the DO came from the Office of General Counsel, the NSAs in-house lawyers, and it was something seldom seen at the agencya preservation order.

Such an order would have charged every DO official, from junior analysts to senior managers, with finding any references to individuals involved in KremlinGate, especially high-ranking Americansand preserving those records for Federal investigators. This would include intercepted phone calls and any transcripts of them, emails, online chats, faxesanything the agency might have picked up last year.

At the request of NSA officials, I will not name the specific individuals that DO personnel have been told to be on the lookout for in SIGINT intercepts, but one could fairly surmise that the list includes virtually all key members of Team Trump.

There are several possible ways such individuals can come up in raw SIGINT. First, they might be the people talking or chatting: in other words, first-person intercept. If NSA has a relevant top-secret warrant issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, such intelligence collection is perfectly legalas well as highly classified.

Second, someone might recount a conversation with one of the individuals the DO is interested in. This seems to be the scenario behind the recent sensational story about how Jared Kushnerthe presidents son-in-law, all-purpose adviser, and former publisher of Observeris said to have asked Sergei Kislyak, Russias ambassador in Washington, to use his embassys secure communications to talk to Moscow. NSA reportedly intercepted a conversation between Kislyak and the Kremlin in which the ambassador relayed Kushners request to his bosses back home.

Third is a kind of intercept which NSA terms reflections, meaning that none of the individuals on the DOs list are involved, but one or more of them are being discussed by third parties. For instance, this could be a conversation between foreign officials about Team Trump and its mounting Russia problems. If the people discussing it are VIPs, their opinions may have intelligence value for policymakers in Washingtoneven if their conversation may shed no new investigative light on KremlinGate.

An example: if NSA intercepts a conversation in which senior diplomats from Middle Eastern countries are chatting about Trumps relationship with Moscow, that could be an important reflection of how their countries leaderships view the situation in Washington. If one of those Middle Eastern countries is a close ally (or avowed enemy) of the United States, their views of KremlinGate would be of interest to high-ranking American officials, even if the conversation is based on no more than press reports and office gossip.

The DO is divided into offices which focus on a specific country or region (e.g. China, the Middle East) or on a defined problem set (e.g. counterterrorism, counterintelligence). Months ago, the DOs Russia shop is said to have received a preservation order from the agencys lawyersno surprise, given what that office does. Now such an order has reportedly been passed to the whole DO, including offices which have nothing to do with Russia. This demonstrates the agencys serious intent to provide investigators with any evidence which may shed additional light on KremlinGate.

That said, NSA may have another motive in issuing this DO-wide order. Such motive is the Intelligence Communitys venerable tradition of self-preservation, what spy-veterans term CYA. As Trumps Russia problems have heated up, his fans and media allies have made increasingly serious accusations of malfeasance by NSA and other spy agencies under President Obama. Some of these wild charges have been ludicrous, merely lies created by Kremlin disinformation outlets, then parroted by right-wing media in America.

That media has lavished particular attention on the issue of SIGINT unmasking, meaning the process of how NSA responds to high-level requests to reveal the name of any American who appears in an intelligence report (normally those names are redacted; for an explanation of how this complex issue really works, see this). Although theres no evidence of any systematic abuse of unmasking by President Obama, this hasnt halted the increasingly shrill accusations.

The Kremlin has tried to smear NSA for years, and that clandestine campaign got a big boost with the defection of Edward Snowden to Moscow almost four years ago. As Ive explained, discrediting NSA and its global intelligence partnerships played a key role in Russias interference in our election last year. In order to counter pervasive lies about the agency and its mission, the reported preservation order includes collecting all customer requests for unmaskings, plus records of which agency analysts accessed the information and when, exactly: in other words, complete data trails of all incidents of SIGINT unmasking in 2016.

An undertaking of this size and scope has never happened in NSAs 65-year history. Although preservation orders have been issued previously, never has the entire DO been told to search all its databases for SIGINT on named individuals, then preserve anything thats discovered. KremlinGate is a unique event in our nations history, with accusations of nefarious meddling by hostile intelligence agencies in our democracy, and its bringing about unprecedented developments in our spy agencies too.

Given the complex nature of SIGINTsuch a DO preservation order will require thousands of analysts to reexamine at least hundreds of thousands of intercepted communicationsit seems likely that some relevant information will be uncovered. Although the public may not learn of new evidence anytime soon, we can rest assured that anything pertinent to the KremlinGate inquiry will be shared with the FBI and Bob Muellers investigators without delay.

John Schindler is a security expert and former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer. A specialist in espionage and terrorism, hes also been a Navy officer and a War College professor. Hes published four books and is on Twitter at @20committee.

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NSA in Unprecedented Hunt for KremlinGate Evidence - Observer

NSA leakers begin sign-ups for monthly leak subscription service – The Hill

A group of suspected National Security Agency (NSA) leakers known as the ShadowBrokers on Tuesday announced more details of their monthly subscription service to provide remaining documents from their NSA cache.

The group has been releasing files that appear to have been pilfered from the NSA in 2013 since last summer most notably releasing a suite of Windows hacking tools that were subsequently used in the Wanna Cry ransomware that induced a global panic earlier this month.

The ShadowBrokers on Tuesday posted instructions on how to join a "Wine of the Month" club for new NSA leaks. In the post, the group said interested parties should send 100 ZCash coins a digital currency akin to bitcoin to sign up for the service. Enrollment will begin June 1 and end June 30.

ZCash coins are currently worth over $230 apiece, making the sign-up cost more $23,000. Only available since October, ZCash is a relatively new entry into the digital currency market, something the ShadowBrokers address in a Q-and-A section of itspost:

"Q: Is Zcash safe and reliable?

"[Explitive] no! If you caring about loosing $20k+ Euro then not being for you. Monthly dump is being for high rollers, hackers, security companies, OEMs, and governments. Playing 'the game' is involving risks."

The post is written in the ShadowBrokers' trademark inconsistent broken English, widely believed to be an attempt to conceal the group's identity.

Little is known about the ShadowBrokers, including whether they are a group or individual, and hackers or NSA insiders leaking files. They first appeared in August trying to auction the complete set of tools, releasing an initial leak purportedly to drum up interest in the sale.

They returned in April to leak Windows tools in what the Brokers said was a protest of President Trump abandoning his hard-right positions for a more centrist view.

In an apparent attempt to capitalize on the notorietyof Wanna Cry, the ShadowBrokers announced their monthly leaking service just after Wanna Cry warranted international headlines.

The leaked documents appear to be at least in part genuine NSA documents. One of the hacking tools releasedby the group contained an identification code mentioned in a previously unreleased Edward Snowden file.

The ShadowBrokers claim they will not announce the contents of the monthlyleaks in advance.

"Q: What is going to be in the next dump?" ask the Brokers in the Monday post.

"TheShadowBrokers is not deciding yet. Something of value to someone. See theshadowbrokers previous posts... Peoples is seeing what happenings when theshadowbrokers is showing theshadowbrokers first. This is being wrong question. Question to be asking 'Can my organization afford not to be first to get access to theshadowbrokers dumps?'"

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NSA leakers begin sign-ups for monthly leak subscription service - The Hill

Hackers, the NSA, Microsoft or Shadow Brokers: Who’s really to blame for WannaCry? – Healthcare IT News (blog)

I try not to jump on bandwagons, but with so much coverage of the worldwideWannaCrymess, I do have a few things to say that you may not have seen elsewhere.

There's beenplentyofmediacoverageso I'll just give a high level overview of what happened. Like many other nations, the USNational Security Agency(NSA) studies computer flaws and develops ways to attack them. TheShadowBrokersare a hacker group who started leaking some of these NSA-developed attacks in the second half of 2016. TheApril 2017 editionof their leaks included the code that enabled the WannaCry attack.

The attack that started on Thurs May 11 consisted of two parts. One would encrypt files so that the owner could not get access to their files (commonly called "CryptoWare"). The other part could get remote access to any vulnerable computer. This was a very powerful combination and this is the first time we've seen this kind of auto-spreading cryptoware. Once infected, the victim sees a screen that directs them to pay a ransom in Bitcoin so the whole attack is considered ransomware.

Now, Microsoft did release a patch in March to fix some of these problems, in particular, the remote access part. So no problem, right? Desktops and laptops are usually easier to patch, and you should always have your home systems set to automatically update. But servers need more testing to assure that applications continue to work as expected.

Patching was a critical part of the fix, but there was definitely more to it including things like new anti-virus signatures, whitelisting, intrusion prevention signatures and firewall rules.

One reason healthcare orgs seemed to be hit hard, including the BritishNational Health Service(NHS) is that healthcare often has many older systems and applications. These can be hard to update. With NHS, most of their desktop systems were running Windows XP!

But now ... who is actually to blame?

Inhispodcast, episode 21,Graham Cluleyasked this question. In particular, the question was, which of Microsoft, NSA, Shadow Brokers are to blame. You can listen to hear what they said.

Here's my opinion. There's one group to blame and then an additional area of concern.

The "blame" goes to those who carried out the exploit!

Yes, they took advantage of existing vulnerabilities and companies that didn't protect their systems, but that's beside the point. I mean, just because a bank has a welcome mat at the door doesn't mean you're allowed to rob it.

Now, what about these software vulnerabilities? Why do we keep having these problems? Someone has to write these in first place. I'm not picking on software developers. I've been one. It's a hard job. Code is very complex. This is something we call secure software engineering and it's not easy, but there are tools available to help us.

For additional reading, security expertMarcus Ranumwastalking about this wholecomplexity issue12 or more years ago.

And, not to pick on Microsoft, but why do we give everyone a computer with a general purpose operating system when most people only do specific things like email or word processing which can both be accomplished inside a browser? The more we can simplify the better off we'll be.

And then there's the correspondingmonocultureproblemwe were discussing 15-20 years ago: If everyone's computer is basically the same,then one problem can take them all out (thinkpotatoblight). And that seems to happen pretty regularly (to computers, not crops). The answer here is special purpose computing, and the more scaled down the better. I'm a big fan of "thin" systems like Chromebooks.

What can you do to protect yourself?

At home and at work: be careful with links and attachments.

At work: follow security policies and work with your IT team on all technology needs (if it uses electricity, it could pose a security issue).

At home: use the default for windows updates, useSecunia PSI, if you use Windows turn on the all the default protections and, of course,back up your data.

There are many good tools available for home backups includingCarboniteandCrashPlan, or even Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive. And two good choices for encrypting data arebitlockerandveracrypt.

You need to take these kinds of steps now because we are going to see more new and bigger attacks coming in the future.

This post originally appeared on Barry Caplins Security and Coffeeblog.

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Hackers, the NSA, Microsoft or Shadow Brokers: Who's really to blame for WannaCry? - Healthcare IT News (blog)

Secret court rebukes NSA for 5-year illegal surveillance of US citizens – Miami Herald


Recode
Secret court rebukes NSA for 5-year illegal surveillance of US citizens
Miami Herald
Parts of the ruling were redacted, including sections that give an indication of the extent of the illegal surveillance, which the NSA told the court in a Jan. 3 notice was partly the fault of human error and system design issues rather than ...
The nation's top tech companies are asking Congress to reform a key NSA surveillance programRecode
Tech giants to Congress: Please change how NSA spies on peopleCNET
Facebook, Google (but not Apple) join in asking Congress to reform government surveillance programSilicon Valley Business Journal
Liberty Nation (registration) (blog) -RT -CNNMoney
all 17 news articles »

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Secret court rebukes NSA for 5-year illegal surveillance of US citizens - Miami Herald

Former NSA, CIA head: Kushner’s attempts to set up backchannel with Russia ignorant, naive – Washington Examiner

Former head of the National Security Agency and CIA Michael Hayden said Jared Kushner's discussions about establishing a backchannel with the Kremlin were ignorant and naive, and said the notion he would do so because of distrust for the Obama administration suggests "we're in a really dark place as a society."

"Well, Michael, right now I'm going with naivete, and that's not particularly very comforting to me," Hayden said in an interview with CNN's Michael Smerconish on Saturday. "I mean what manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or an appropriate idea?"

The Washington Post reported Friday that Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law and a senior adviser at the White House, and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak discussed setting up a secret and secure communications channel between the Trump transition team and the Kremlin.

Kushner allegedly suggested using U.S.-based Russian diplomatic facilities for the communications to protect their discussions from any monitoring by the U.S. government, Kislyak said.

Hayden, whose career with the NSA and CIA spans three presidential administrations, said the notion that Kushner wanted to avoid monitoring suggests that Trump didn't trust the previous administration.

Actions borne out of that distrust "suggests we're in a really dark place as a society," Hayden said.

"Here you are willing to risk the perception of secret communications with your alleged co-conspirator because you feared the existing government so much," he said.

When asked what how he believed Kislyak responded to Kushner's suggestion of setting up backchannels, Hayden said the request "goes so far out of the norm that he was probably shocked."

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Former NSA, CIA head: Kushner's attempts to set up backchannel with Russia ignorant, naive - Washington Examiner