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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
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @09:53PM (2 children)
This sounds interesting and informative... assuming it's true.
Do you have any specific examples you can point to in slashdot or wikipedia? I'd love to get a couple of slashdot IDs (or better, message threads) to check for myself. Given the ease you say at finding these, can you find a couple and provide a couple?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Monday November 05 2018, @10:58PM
Hiding in plain sight has always made sense in general. If your plan for world domination is hidden and somebody stumbles into it, it is a disaster. If you put your plan in the homepage nobody bats an eye. I am not joking, there are official policies and news items and books and studies absolutely on par with the mein kampf, there is no sensation around it because they are public. What about things hiding as works of fiction? What about writing something with inconsistencies so that those inconsistencies can be pointed out to proclaim the item a fraud after it has circulated enough for its possession not to be problematic?
As for the rest of the comments if you use your fantasy you can come up with even better ways to communicate hiding in plain sight. Info in side channels.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 06 2018, @04:57AM
The purple goose is flying backwards. Put the baby in the bath and and feed it mayonnaise. Do NOT go down to the woods today.
The eiderdown is inflated. Repeat. The eiderdown is inflated.