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Barely an hour after a news organization published an article about a Top Secret National Security Agency document on Russian hacking, the Justice Department announced charges against a 25-year-old government contractor who a senior federal official says was the leaker of the document.
The May 5, 2017 intelligence document published by The Intercept, an online news organization, describes new details about Russian efforts to hack voting systems in the U.S a week prior to the 2016 presidential election. While the document doesn't say the hacking changed any votes, it "raises the possibility that Russian hacking may have breached at least some elements of the voting system, with disconcertingly uncertain results."
Even as the document was ricocheting around Washington, the Justice Department announced that a criminal complaint was filed in the Southern District of Georgia charging Reality Leigh Winner, 25, a federal contractor, with removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet.
Source: NBC News
Once investigative efforts identified Winner as a suspect, the FBI obtained and executed a search warrant at her residence. According to the complaint, Winner agreed to talk with agents during the execution of the warrant. During that conversation, Winner admitted intentionally identifying and printing the classified intelligence reporting at issue despite not having a "need to know," and with knowledge that the intelligence reporting was classified. Winner further admitted removing the classified intelligence reporting from her office space, retaining it, and mailing it from Augusta, Georgia, to the news outlet, which she knew was not authorized to receive or possess the documents.
Source: Department of Justice
While the document provides a rare window into the NSA's understanding of the mechanics of Russian hacking, it does not show the underlying "raw" intelligence on which the analysis is based. A U.S. intelligence officer who declined to be identified cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis is not necessarily definitive.
Source: The Intercept
How The Intercept Outed Reality Winner
Julian Assange: Alleged NSA leaker 'must be supported'
Bad tradecraft: How the Intercept may have outed its own leaker
WikiLeaks tweet #1: "Suspected Intercept reporter gave US government NSA whistleblower Reality Leigh Winner's post code, printout and her report number" and tweet #2: "WikiLeaks issues a US$10,000 reward for information leading to the public exposure & termination of this 'reporter'".
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 07 2017, @06:22AM (23 children)
The government found out about the leaker, Reality Leigh Winner [heavy.com] a 25 year old female. By using hidden dots in the document as explained by erratasec [erratasec.com] and arstechnica [arstechnica.com]. EFF has a list of which printers [eff.org] that have this tracking function (Okidata and Samsung seems like good choices for privacy).
The tracking technology [wikipedia.org] uses yellow dots in 0.1 mm size with a raster distance of 1 mm. If your printed document have them. They can be tracked. The data that can be found this way is the time of printing and the serial number.
Of course if the printer would not get the instruction to print these then.. there will be no tracking either.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday June 07 2017, @06:41AM (17 children)
It's not conclusively known that the yellow dots led to the arrest.
Here's another account:
Slam dunk!
Either way, it's more evidence that can be used against the alleged leaker.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Wednesday June 07 2017, @06:51AM (16 children)
She should have feed the documents to a offline OCR process. That should remove most of this stuff. However that the Intercept.. didn't intercept this leak is kind of embarrassing.
Btw, how can folding or creasing indicate a secured space?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday June 07 2017, @07:13AM (12 children)
These kinds of places are not supposed to allow you to say, plug a USB flash drive into the computer, copy the files, and walk out with them. But sending the file to the work printer queue and then smuggling the printed pages out of the building is definitely possible, just ill-advised.
(I think Manning got around anti-USB restrictions by burning files to a CD, but I'll have to double check that.)
The crease/etc. indicated that it was printed at the secure location and probably scanned later at home in order to create a digital file that could be sent to The Intercept. As opposed to the other scenario of the NSA being hacked from the outside or something, e.g. The Shadow Brokers (although I heard it was debatable whether they actually hacked the NSA).
If Reality Winner did want to leak some docs, a better way could have been to transcribe the document by hand without printing anything, and then type that up back at home and find a secure channel (Tor hidden service or whatever) to send it to The Intercept from coffee shop/etc. Wi-Fi. And do it some weeks after having come into contact with the docs, not immediately after having received them in an email or however that happened. Then if she appeared on a short list of potential leakers... practice feigning ignorance and beating the polygraph beforehand.
And even that method would be defeated if the govt. ever gets the bright idea to send unique docs with a few words changed to every recipient. I don't know if that's likely to happen, but if they do it another leaker could get their life fucked up.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 07 2017, @07:30AM (8 children)
Photographing the screen using a micro camera might be an idea?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday June 07 2017, @07:50AM
It's still a device, and suspicious if found.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday June 07 2017, @11:23AM (6 children)
She clearly wasn't some kind of female James Bond. Plus if said camera was found passing thru security that would have been suspicious as hell.
Apparently she at least knew how screwed she was when the FBI came a knockin' on her door that she admitted it straight away, which is somewhat refreshing. So one can only assume this will be a simple and fast slam dunk trial followed by a long prison sentence.
That has got to be some kind of name change gag, her parents can't have been that clueless.
Have they ever paid out any money? They seem to be offering rewards for various things all the time but one never hears about them actually paying any rewards.
(Score: 1) by oakgrove on Wednesday June 07 2017, @11:42AM (3 children)
This silliness is indeed self-imposed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @03:32PM (2 children)
> This silliness is indeed self-imposed.
Citation?
Her mother's last name [cnn.com] is "Winner-Davis" - Davis is her stepfather's last name.
So Reality Leigh Winner is likely her given name.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @05:31PM
yes, and i can see her hippy parents discussing/creating the name now...i'm sure a baby is a heavy dose indeed.
(Score: 1) by oakgrove on Saturday June 10 2017, @06:55AM
She changed her first name from Sara to Reality.
>citation
Look it up yourself if you don't believe me.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday June 07 2017, @08:51PM
Reality Leigh Winner
That has got to be some kind of name change gag, her parents can't have been that clueless.
Wrong. People around that age have all kinds of weird and idiotic names these days. I've heard tons of them. There's absolutely something wrong with a large fraction of Americans in the 45-60yo age range (the age the 20-somethings' parents, the parents of the Millennials, would be now), as these are the people who picked these stupid names.
People keep deriding the Millennials for all kinds of things, but what they fail to realize is that the fault really lies with their parents for doing a lousy job of raising them and providing them a good society to live in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @11:35PM
... is there is less incentive to moderate if you know you get 25 yrs whether it is one document or a disk drive of them.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 07 2017, @12:09PM
Which has been a standard trick in the bag for a long time (at least since the Second World War). If you leak a lot over time to a reporter who quotes from the documents, you will get caught.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @03:33PM (1 child)
AFAIK the anti-USB policies came about because of Manning's use of a flash drive to walk files.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday June 08 2017, @08:16PM
Manning used a CD-RW and only put it on a flash drive later, after the files had already been "walked out":
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/28/how-us-embassy-cables-leaked [theguardian.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning#Release_of_material_to_WikiLeaks [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @01:42PM (2 children)
She was not very smart. I don't need a degree in clinical psychology to diagnose a narcissistic personality disorder in this one either. The fact idiots like this get security clearance is ridiculous. Her online presence is pure retard-level vitriol. The left propaganda has rotted another brain, and ruined what could have been a productive life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @08:08PM (1 child)
Funny, I thought you were referring to someone with less "Reality" in their name, and personality, like The Donald.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @10:03AM
Await the virtualDonaldTriumph! ;-)
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Wednesday June 07 2017, @05:17PM (4 children)
EFF's list is outdated.
I use an OKI MC562w printer for office work, and it seems to use forensic markers as well. It ruins print jobs where you run a sheet through several times--the color builds up with each successive print until it is visible.
We also have a Kyocera TASKalfa 3550ci multifunction for public use, and it also displays dots, though not as obtrusive as the OKI's.
--
This was an accidental discovery--after a series of fortuitous mistakes while designing some brochures, I found that if you run the same sheet through the printer multiple times, the small variations in sheet feed causes the color in the security markings to be deposited unevenly making it larger and more visible. In the OKI, they show up as a kind of smoky schmutz after 4-5 prints, while on the Kyocera, it takes 6-10 prints and you see distinct yellow dots.
Interestingly, the EFF doesn't seem to have used this method of detection, though, as users don't generally do multiple prints on the same surface, it may not have occurred to them.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 07 2017, @06:14PM (3 children)
Just a little counter hint.. The image on a page is built up using a bitstream that is scanned onto the drum inside the laser. Now if that laser on/off controlled by a bitstream were to come from somewhere else then, viola the whole design is circumvented ;)
I think the bitrate is in the 4.6 Mbit/s ballpark.
For A4 with 600 dpi printing 8 pages per minute in B/W:
inch = 0.025400
(0.210*(600/inch) * .297*(600/inch)) / (60/8) = 4.6e6 bit/s
For 1200 dpi:
(0.210*(1200/inch) * .297*(1200/inch)) / (60/8) = 19e6 bit/s
Needs a serious serdes unit however. Way faster than standard I2S ports.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @05:36AM
"then, viola"
Either you mean "voila" [wiktionary.org], or you're 3d-printing violin-like string instruments [wikipedia.org] :)
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Thursday June 08 2017, @11:31PM (1 child)
That makes a lot of sense.
I'm not sure how I would fix it though, given my crap electronics skills. (If it was carpentry, no problem).
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 09 2017, @05:58AM
You could write a bit-bang program for say a Raspberry-Pi using two of the GPIO outputs. The first GPIO takes input from the laser scanner module and triggers your code to send. The second GPIO will output a string of bits synchronously until one line is complete. The rest is just setup and repetition. To get rid of jitter all interrupts and multitasking has to be shut of when running the code.
The advantage is that you may get away with just wiring the laser scanner module to some GPIO pins. At worst you will have 36 clock cycles per bit to output. A 900 MHz RPi with 600 dpi would have a margin of 195 clock cycles per bit. Plenty of CPU cycles to go around. There should also be some opto-switch or similar to trigger start of a new page. This could also wack all "driver incompatibility" stuff.