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posted by takyon on Monday November 05 2018, @04:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the only-the-shadow-knows...-and-has-head-up-its-ass dept.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used a quick and dirty web-based system to communicate with its agents around the world. Easy-to-use but not sophisticated. Iran and China used this system to find U.S. spies and convert or kill many agents, including entire national spy networks, starting around 2008.

Once you recognized the system, counter-spies could simply use Google to find the CIA's communication sites. They could then use standard traffic analysis to find out who visited the sites, identifying the spy networks.

Iran found spies using the system, converted some to double agents, while killing dozens of others. Iran may have passed the info to China, who wiped out the CIA network there, turning and killing 30+ agents. Iran then went spy hunting across the Middle East, too.

The absolute kicker: a CIA tech contractor identified the problem, that the network was compromised and spies were disappearing due to it, and reported it up the chain in 2008. He was ignored, punished and fired. Part of the reason we know this all happened is because he filed a federal whistleblower protection lawsuit.

So many/most of these U.S. agents would not be dead if CIA management AND the CIA inspector general had listened and acted on the report of a technical/security problem. Instead they denied they had a problem, burying their heads and their agents in the sand. Not only is the CIA riddled with terrible torture monkeys, but also deadly, incompetent, and inept management.

Article: The CIA's communications suffered a catastrophic compromise. It started in Iran.

Previously: CIA Informants Imprisoned and Killed in China From 2010 to 2012
Ex-CIA Officer Arrested, Suspected of Compromising Chinese Informants


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by looorg on Monday November 05 2018, @05:16PM (2 children)

    by looorg (578) on Monday November 05 2018, @05:16PM (#758065)

    They probably did create a few double agents. But not everyone can be turned or is perhaps worth the effort -- I get the impression from the article that a lot of these spies was in the initial stages of recruitment so they might not have had a lot to offer. Also dead spies serves as warnings and leverage to others -- join us or you get the torture and death option to.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @06:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @06:27PM (#758111)

    Just to clarify, the OP didn't say double agents just misinformation campaigns so the spies are at best useless and possibly even harmful. I doubt this would work too well in this day and age, hard to weave a web of lies with the level of detailed information out there.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @08:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @08:17PM (#758173)

    God quit you in his mercy! Hear your sentence.
    You have conspired against our royal person,
    Join'd with an enemy proclaim'd and from his coffers
    Received the golden earnest of our death;
    Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter,
    His princes and his peers to servitude,
    His subjects to oppression and contempt
    And his whole kingdom into desolation.
    Touching our person seek we no revenge;
    But we our kingdom's safety must so tender,
    Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws
    We do deliver you. Get you therefore hence,
    Poor miserable wretches, to your death:
    The taste whereof, God of his mercy give
    You patience to endure, and true repentance
    Of all your dear offences! Bear them hence.
    (William Shakespeare's Henry V)