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
Related Stories
The New York Times reports that the Central Intelligence Agency faced one of its worst intelligence gathering setbacks in decades when many of its informants in China were killed or imprisoned between 2010 and 2012. To this day, it is unknown how the identities of the informants were compromised:
From the final weeks of 2010 through the end of 2012, according to former American officials, the Chinese killed at least a dozen of the C.I.A.'s sources. According to three of the officials, one was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building — a message to others who might have been working for the C.I.A.
Still others were put in jail. All told, the Chinese killed or imprisoned 18 to 20 of the C.I.A.'s sources in China, according to two former senior American officials, effectively unraveling a network that had taken years to build.
Assessing the fallout from an exposed spy operation can be difficult, but the episode was considered particularly damaging. The number of American assets lost in China, officials said, rivaled those lost in the Soviet Union and Russia during the betrayals of both Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, formerly of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., who divulged intelligence operations to Moscow for years.
The previously unreported episode shows how successful the Chinese were in disrupting American spying efforts and stealing secrets years before a well-publicized breach in 2015 gave Beijing access to thousands of government personnel records, including intelligence contractors. The C.I.A. considers spying in China one of its top priorities, but the country's extensive security apparatus makes it exceptionally hard for Western spy services to develop sources there.
Also at BBC, which notes:
Last year, China warned government officials to watch out for spies - and not fall in love with them
This CIA story really helps put that "Don't date a foreigner!" campaign in perspective. You don't want to see your significant other bleeding out in the street, do you? DO YOU?!
Update: Chinese paper applauds anti-spy efforts after report CIA sources killed
Ex-CIA officer arrested for retaining classified information
A former Central Intelligence Agency officer was arrested at a U.S. airport on Monday night in connection with charges that he illegally retained highly classified information, the U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday.
Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a U.S. citizen who now lives in Hong Kong, used to maintain a top secret clearance and began working for the CIA in 1994.
The Justice Department said that in 2012, FBI agents searched his hotel rooms during trips to Virginia and Hawaii. They discovered he had two small books containing handwritten information on details such as the true names and numbers of spy recruits and covert CIA employees.
Ex-C.I.A. Officer Suspected of Compromising Chinese Informants Is Arrested
A former C.I.A. officer suspected by investigators of helping China dismantle United States spying operations and identify informants has been arrested, the Justice Department said on Tuesday. The collapse of the spy network was one of the American government's worst intelligence failures in recent years.
You may remember this story: CIA Informants Imprisoned and Killed in China From 2010 to 2012
Also at BBC, SCMP, and Washington Post (archive).
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @04:11PM (23 children)
But her emails! They weren't secure! [eye roll]
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @04:28PM (3 children)
Exactly. I wonder how many agents were killed as a direct result of her discussing classified information while her email server was compromised.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @04:33PM (1 child)
Found the Russian
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @09:27PM
I'm sorry Romney, but the cold war is over!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @05:34PM
Her email wasn't compromised. It was set up specifically so foreign companies could buy the passwords from her and read everything they liked.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @05:45PM (15 children)
that stupid murderous bitch was doing the same stupid shit as these fucktards. using shit softwarre in a callous disregard for national security interests (or outright treason). roll them all the way back and stay there, dipshit.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @06:03PM (11 children)
Yes, and to solve this problem, you elected another psychopathic child-molesting putin-cock-sucking traitor.
You stupid, uneducated, clueless, guillible, culturally corrupt americans deserve the governements you get.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @06:22PM (9 children)
No.
It is now pretty clear that there is massive fraud going on with election machines and voter suppression, thus throwing into doubt Bush's win over Gore and Trump's win over Clinton. We are getting a corrupt government supported by a very rabid minority.
1. Campaign finance reform, repeal Citizens United
2. Voting reform, get rid of the shitty machines and get back to systems with some accountability
3. Imprison politicians for voter fraud / suppression, we have quite enough audio/video evidence showing that these tactics are deliberate and in bad faith
Notice the lack of partisan identification here, if you feel attacked by the above then you are part of the problem.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @09:07PM (6 children)
If voter fraud was so widespread, Trump would never have made it through the primaries.
NOBODY in the establishments, of any party, wanted him as presidential candidate. Not the democrats (even if he could in theory have represented an advantage for Clinton, the risk was just too great), and especially not the republicans.
But I guess it's easier to adhere to some conspiracy theory about election fraud than to accept the cruel reality that people, in general, really ARE that clueless.
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." -- Winston Churchill
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @09:53PM
Because the DNC and RNC are booth tools of the MIC. Looks like the DOD likes Trump plenty.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Gaaark on Monday November 05 2018, @10:53PM
But it seems nobody wanted Clinton either.
Wish they'd dumped her ass and gone with Sanders after they discovered her team stole from Bernie.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dry on Tuesday November 06 2018, @06:25AM (3 children)
The media wanted Trump. CNN by itself gave how many billions in free advertising? If Trump was unwanted, the same thing would have been done to him as to Ron Paul, silence. Trump is great for the media companies.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Wednesday November 07 2018, @09:16PM (2 children)
The media wanted money. Any candidate except Trump had people changing the channel or switching to another Youtube video or flipping back to their Facebook feed. Ron Paul had equal charisma to Hillary Clinton and less controversy, so he got even less coverage.
He didn't win because they wanted him. He won because their revenue model is inherently broken, and his personality fit the breaks in the system.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday November 08 2018, @12:57AM (1 child)
Exactly, they don't give a shit about anything but eyeballs to sell ads and create revenue and that's why they wanted him. Even now they're likely happy to have him to draw eyeballs.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Saturday November 17 2018, @02:15PM
Well, as much as I hate it that's human nature. People will conveniently ignore the impact of the way they earn their living.
DEA: "Marijuana is pure evil! The devil in chemical form! The destruction of America!" Nope, it's less harmful than alcohol. You just don't want a funding cut.
Coal industry: "Coal is a safe domestic energy source! Climate change doesn't exist! Deaths from asthma and lung disease don't exist!" Nope. I was all for renewable energy thirty years ago, because I have siblings and cousins hospitalized with asthma problems and I grew up a mile from an active coal mine.
American South: "Servitude is the natural state of the negro race!" Nope, it just lines your pockets for you to believe that.
21st century media: "We take no responsibility for Trump's political victories! But you're not going to believe what he said this morning!" Nope, Trump took PT Barnum's statement "There's no such thing as bad publicity" and rode it right into the White House, and you were the ones that carried him there.
Obviously DEA employees, coal industry workers and owners, and modern media employees and executives aren't as immoral as slave owners and wannabe slave owners. But the same logic applies in all cases. And to repeat, I don't blame them - if someone presented an argument that my career path and lifestyle choices are immoral and correct action will remove my own ability to put food on the table, I probably wouldn't listen either. I'm not more moral than these people, I'm just luckier.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 06 2018, @01:34AM
Assuming for a second this is true... then why is it true? I mean both the Democrats as well as the Republicans have significant levers of power. They've each controlled at least one of the houses of congress, if not the presidency as well. If there was systemic rigging in favor of one party over the other, I'd expect official inquiries and reforms.
I'm ideologically agreed about campaign finance reform, and I've heard enough anecdotal evidence that I can believe voter suppression (although honestly I'm not sure why there haven't been national inquiries about that if it is true). I'm curious to hear your explanation about how electronic voting and voting manipulation could have survived unacknowledged for over 20 years, though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 06 2018, @03:34AM
Ahahahahahahaha
"It's not rigged, you are just losing." Get fucked Democrats.
Tomorrow will be one hellova salt mine
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday November 06 2018, @11:37AM
Sometimes +5 insightful just isn't enough.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @07:30PM (1 child)
Given your feelings for her, perhaps you'd like to tell Trump to listen to his intelligence officers and secure the phones he uses for official business given he's been warned multiple times by them over the last few years that his phone is NOT secured and is a threat to national security. That's right, he's been using shit software in a callous disregard for national security interests (or outright treason - but then we have far more conclusive evidence of his own treason anyway.)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @09:55PM
I remember when tney tried to secure obamas phone and he wouldnt use it either. Basically there is no such thing as a secure and usable cell phone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @07:59PM
Assuming she wasn't feeding them false info.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Monday November 05 2018, @06:18PM (2 children)
I said you but I could say we because EU is on the same page.
If whistleblowing were a grave act but doable without becoming the target of reprisals, the guy could have leaked his story to the public.
Remember the OOOOH SNOOOOWDEN HE PUT LIVES AT RIIISK!
Well, here's your real networks compromised. Your real spies snuffed. Try to spin it against trumptards or hitlary followers all you want, but it's basically deep state against us (or even worse, these wars between secret services are mere intestine wars, and the system is already one, no borders, yay).
How you defeat deep state? well start by not caving in to eastern block tactics of pitting citizens against citizens. Peons should not hurt each other if possible.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @08:10PM (1 child)
What does that mean? Everybody shits over each other?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday November 05 2018, @10:45PM
First definition of the first google entry for 'intestine'.
intestine adjective
in·tes·tine | \in-ˈte-stən
\
Definition of intestine
(Entry 1 of 2)
: internal specifically : of or relating to the internal affairs of a state or country
intestine war
Or were you trying to be funny? in that case, ha, ha.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @04:23PM (6 children)
Untold black budget funding but they are using google+ or a proboards forum for secure communications? Maybe it really is all like at the FBI where the redacted classified stuff is spending on $75k tables and such.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday November 05 2018, @04:36PM
Google+ would have been the secure pick. :/
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by DECbot on Monday November 05 2018, @04:58PM (3 children)
I need to start building tables as a hobby.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday November 05 2018, @05:17PM (2 children)
Hand crafted sql tables.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @05:29PM
Bobby Tables...
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday November 05 2018, @09:25PM
Yes but can they turn?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 06 2018, @03:37AM
It's like the fucking techno-babble on TV.
"I'll create a GUI Interface using Visual Basic. See if I can track an IP address."
"Got it: 127.0.0.1"
"That's LOCAL HOST! GET OUT, THE KILLER IS IN THE LAN!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @05:01PM (3 children)
Isn't it such a waste of opportunity when you kill a confirmed covert agent of your enemy? It is so much more useful to weave a web of illusion around them and lead your foe's HQ into believing what you dictate.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by looorg on Monday November 05 2018, @05:16PM (2 children)
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @06:27PM
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
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)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @05:50PM (1 child)
the bosses need to be held accountable (hang the top ones who knew) when they are engaged in willful negligence like this. there's no acceptable excuse.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday November 05 2018, @10:59PM
Modded insightful, then tried to mod "it'll never happen" but couldn't. :(
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Freeman on Monday November 05 2018, @05:57PM (1 child)
How about instead of punishing those that you've hired, you give them a medal, and thank them for their service? Any Civilian organization that tried to cover up the fact that they knew people got killed due to this kind of thing and didn't report it. Would be crucified in the media and would have investigators on their doorstep. Instead, a normal guy, reports to his superiors that "there's this huge problem and people have died, because of it", and they go ahead and fire him! 'cause, you know, we can't have someone competent working for the CIA.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @11:34PM
It's called "shoot the messenger". It's one of the most incredibly counterproductive, useless, stupid, damaging, demoralizing, unfair and cruel acts the powerful can do. Yet it happens all too often, and the responsible parties are not held accountable.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by linkdude64 on Monday November 05 2018, @06:03PM (5 children)
Whoever that network analyst was. What a travesty - all of our training and deployment strategies were lost with them. There's no hope of making a new generation behind them in time.
Truly haunting - I can not imagine the fear of knowing you are a spy in enemy territory, but have been assured that everything is okay and that you're safe because the US is backing you - then, as you are captured and tortured, you realize you'll never see home again, and that nobody home even really knows where you've gone. Total isolation.
Fuck those fucking fucks who ignored the technicians. These goddamned political hack appointees need to be strung up. America used to elect competent people - warriors, warlords, educated noblemen who existed in a time when anything went and only the strongest made it up to the top. I remember being flabbergasted at one of Obama's secretaries of defense - his knowledge of the world of defense was literally nothing but being a pencil pusher at a major defense contractor. At the very fucking least Trump hired appropriate people to appropriate positions - the leader of a spy agency should not be an MBA, he should have been a spy. What a fucking travesty.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @06:35PM (2 children)
"At the very fucking least Trump hired appropriate people to appropriate positions" hahahah wtf???
"America used to elect competent people - warriors, warlords, educated noblemen who existed in a time when anything went and only the strongest made it up to the top."
Ummm, do you pay any attention to reality? The US has been fucked up for a very long time but aside from that the "strongest made it up to the top" is the most insane and harmful ideology around. That mindset goes against human nature and promotes socio/psycho-pathic behavior. There was pretty much never a time when "anything went", laws are not new things.
This weird meritocratic attitude denies human nature and creates a competitive atmosphere in a cooperative environment. I dream of a day when humans stop competing stupidly and realize we need each other to survive.
At the very end I'll admit there is some value to meritocracy / competition (obviously), but it shouldn't be the primary influence for structuring society.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by linkdude64 on Monday November 05 2018, @11:24PM (1 child)
"hahahah wtf???"
I can see the Salon headline now: "This one incredible argument on Soylent DESTROYS Trump."
"The US has been fucked up for a very long time but aside from that"
ANOTHER EPIC argument.
You must honestly believe that Edison was a poor competitor for completely fucking destroying his smarter-but-not-better genius "opponent" - or wait, by your following statement, humans do NOT naturally compete and they only seek to cooperate, right?
"Weird meritocratic attitude denies human nature"
You're so right, humans by nature NEVER fight each other or compete, look to the strongest to lead them, or try to advance their standings through skill. You are as dumb as a fucking brick. Right on for posting AC.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 06 2018, @01:04PM
>> "At the very fucking least Trump hired appropriate people to appropriate positions"
> "hahahah wtf???"
Here are some choice picks.
Rex Tillerson. A civil engineer and businessman. Elevated to one of the highest political offices in the country with ZERO experience of foreign policy, or of politics at all. Repeatedly contradicted, overruled, humiliated and twitrollered by Chump himself. I think Tillerson's the one who was going to turn the job down because he recognised that he was completely unqualified, until his wife convinced him he was on a mission from God. Or something.
Mike Pompeo. Former military & CIA guy in the pocket of Big Oil. OK, closer to foreign affairs but torturing / blowing foreigners up isn't the same as international diplomacy. Or at least it's not supposed to be.
Steve Mnuchin: Standard Yale > Skull&bones > Goldman Sachs > obnoxious weasel career path. No political experience. OK, he's shuffled large sums of money around in an investment bank, but that's not at all the same as managing the budget of a nation.
Secretary of housing and urban development: Ben Carson. A surgeon. Presumably Trump selected him because Carson is a black dude and there's the word "urban" right there in the job title. That last bit is not a joke, BTW, I fully believe it to be true. Trump really is bigoted and thick enough to do just that.
Betsy DeVos: Businesswoman and lifelong political donor / fundraiser with no experience in education or of actually holding a political post.
"The mooch", Steve Bannon, Hope Hicks, that woman from the reality TV show... need I say more?
Basically, Trump's criteria for appointing someone seems to be:
- Are they willing to quietly forget any previous criticism of Trump and kiss the Fat Orange Ring?
- Are they rich and sleazy?
- Are they a corrupt kleptocrat in favour of cutting taxes for the rich?
Yay! You're in!
Bonus points if they've been in the military at some point, there's a lot of ex-military guys in the full line up. I think Trump gets a hardon for uniforms. Perhaps he's tying to atone for the fact that Trump himself is a draft-dodger, or maybe because Trump's Daddy believed that any and all character flaws could be straightened out by a spell at military school. I mean it must be true, it worked so well on Donald, right?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday November 05 2018, @11:07PM
Aaaaaand, THEIR spy's are still active because their handlers and on up are more intelligent, I'm guessing.
This. is. fucked. Spies need EXTRA coverage (and cover) not incompetent handlers.
You're right: you'd be thinking your back was covered. Then you find the one person who HAD your back covered just got fired and now your cover is wide open?!?
SHEEEIT!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday November 06 2018, @12:31AM
Yeah, Ajit Pai has been great for us...
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @06:05PM (4 children)
The sad sack thing is that this still isn't fixed.
They changed some elements of the "signature" and they no longer stand up discussion forums of their own. But a significant amount of traffic has always funneled through public discussion and sharing sites like Slashdot and Wikipedia and this hasn't changed.
That is the only reason you are being told what little is in the article.
The whole human intelligence apparatus has always been a "hidden in plain sight" system, that started with local classified ads.
What has changed here is the platform for discussion no longer involves routing the conversation through multiple media sites and backpages is gone but that wouldn't be an attempt to staunch the bleeding.
Regardless of platform, this traffic looks like it's just part of the conversational flow, but with some strangeness thrown in. It's there hidden in plain sight.
It relies on conceptual conversational masking. A post with a single statement along the lines of "Ya know, 'topic' is like 'concept'" where topic is in fact topical and relevant but concept can seem way out in left field, eventually a reply comes in relating to another concept.
This is then followed by the same users later posting in older topics about 'concept' where they appear to be rambling a bit incoherently about a topic that is no longer front and center on the site.
The initial semi-incoherent ramblings are code strings not ciphers, and easy to identify because they are repeated verbatim by different users. You can find the conversations between agents and handlers, simply by looking at people who mostly, as in 80% of the time, are only talking with each other over a longish period of time, say days or weeks across a range of topics and these people are clearly neither SMEs nor do they posses more than a lay understanding of the topic.
An example of this would be a small handful of people discussing recent fusion energy discoveries but conflating concepts of fusion and fission (happens in Slashdot just before news broke of Iran's centrifuges being destroyed).
It's relevant, sorta, but it's wrong, however suddenly upon looking back, you notice that these same concepts do apply to something from the near future.
Once you understand how "concept" maps to "code", then it becomes relatively easy to follow the discussion holders, and understanding the discussion itself is as easy as exfiltrating a code book. While that sounds difficult, code books are electronic and produced by contractors and these contractors or at least their employees, do recognize the value of what they hold and will sell to the highest bidder because the risk vs reward is there.
Unfortunately, to facilitate these conversations, the intelligence community doesn't use disposable one time use accounts, because the account name is used by the handlers to pin a message to a human source element without the need for a digital signature. This has the effect of compromising the entire network once one participant is discovered. Tor hidden services were created to mask exactly this, but Tor public exits are now known to be weak because of exit node sibyls and logging. Iran, China, Russia all control as many nodes on Tor as the NSA and CIA do, and let's not forget Tor has always been a project of NAVY SIGINT and has never been shy about that. Tor packets whether destined for a hidden service or the web are easy to map back. If you control just 1% of nodes on the network you can reliably trace traffic back to a particular IP and in most cases you can decrypt it if you can man in the middle the handshake. That becomes especially easy if you're already in control at the POP or ISP level.
So if you're trying to find these conversations, the first step is to look for verbatim repeated phrases, because the verbatim repeats amount to a handshake. And this is what makes google so damned handy.
After the verbatim repeats, which allow you to identify both source and handler, you'll notice that in the conversations between these people there are conceptual repeats without being quite verbatim.
That's generally where the information exchange is.
In addition to repeated phrases. There have also been instances of emergency key killing for hidden services, using deadman's switches to canary that they have been compromised. This is what you are seeing when someone posts a nonsense message (usually AC) followed by a base64 encoded string.
The base64 encoded string is there to identify the poster (who is AC because the true poster is the automated canary), it's a crypto signature and used as a last resort to say "I've been compromised". The resource running it doesn't check in periodically and the automated system fires the message off, thereby notifying dog + world.
If you want to see proof, check out Slashdot and Wikipedia posts in the weeks and months leading to Arab Spring. The first place to look would be for an article about the political situation in Tunisia and some all but irrelevant posts comparing Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail (UGTT) to the Teamsters Union in the USA. That will point you onto conversations between a handler and a handful of operatives establishing the groundwork for Arab Spring in Tunisia utilizing UGTT and it's members to establish a flashpoint. Discussion tend to focus on union vs anti-union stances. Notice how the same people are discussing the same topics repeatedly, then suddenly stop at the start of the Syrian Civil war and now most of them never post at all anymore.
There are a ton of intelligence failures in our intelligence community from about the same time as well. It's almost like there was some money being handed under the table to root out these networks and this never really went away, the government just got better at denying it.
But foreign intelligence could never successfully compromise honest, hardworking, red blooded american citizens just keeping their nose down and doing their job in the bureaucracy, right? No way someone earning $55 - $60k per year would risk that position and the safety of their fellow countrymen for a few hundred thousand dollars with almost zero risk of ever being discovered. After all, even on that salary those people would have no problems affording an Ivy League education for their children, a half a million dollar home and nice car to go along with it. Even if it could be hidden in crypto currency with the subsequent thousand fold rise in value for literally no valid reason other than a ton of previously dark money flooding into the markets.
Not that it's related, but this was a major intelligence failure as well.
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/06/26/2149233/us-fears-loss-of-icq-honeypot [slashdot.org]
Ya know it's almost like the Israeli company Mirabilis had put in backdoors into their communication tool, like Blackberry did for Canada, but don't worry guys because Telegram from Russia is obviously free of any backdoors.
(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.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday November 05 2018, @11:23PM
Take third word of every paragraph, you get the code phrase:
"Sack some human platform on then semi-incoherent of understand facilitate you're to want a intelligence it's."
This means the tech contractor who tried to tell needs to be fired.
Already done. Message received and destroyed. Will be poo soon.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday November 05 2018, @06:11PM (4 children)
The reason the CIA is often so stupid is that they're one of the few organizations out there allowed to kill off and hide the evidence of their mistakes. So what tends to happen is a snowball effect: They try to do something useful. A small mistake happens. So they do a bunch of operations to hide the evidence of that mistake. But those operations screw up a bunch of other things, so now they have to do even more to hide those. And this keeps on ballooning until the point where it can't be fixed covertly anymore, and then all of a sudden their former buddies have become Public Enemy #1 and we're spending billions to send troops or drones to some faraway country to deal with them.
One other current that's very notable in the CIA's history is that they have been a consistent backer of fascist dictatorships in the world ever since they were re-formed from the OSS.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @06:37PM (1 child)
and it seems such shitty tactics are filtering into the US mainstream causing some morons to promote a fascist dictatorship over democracy. The irony is too much with such self-proclaimed "patriots".
(Score: 5, Touché) by Bot on Monday November 05 2018, @11:00PM
> causing some morons to promote a fascist dictatorship over democracy.
Yeah, luckily Trump won, instead.
*ducks*
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @06:55PM (1 child)
You're talking about consistency across generations. That's not really feasible.
Your viewpoint is based on the idea of a coherent organization with coherent goals, but that coherency is an illusion.
In fact the Intelligence community at large is very fractured and you have almost as many competing interests as you do individuals working within the organizations.
Think of it in terms of people, each with their own unique story to tell.
You have the nerds, we aren't anti-social or sociopaths, but a lot of times we allow our ambitions to cloud our judgement. We do what is interesting to us and frame it within a context that justifies it.
Specifically, the nerds who make crypto & security and the nerds who compromise crypto & security are functionally identical, but with diametrically opposed viewpoints justifying their behavior.
We are the do'ers though, we're the ones who make it possible for things to happen without necessarily considering all possible outcomes.
You think the 21 year old hotshot government script kiddie is functionally different from the 16 year kid who bought some scripts online to see what he could break, or the 32 year old who wrote these tools and released them in hopes that knowing the exploits exist would tighten rather than compromise security generally? You're fooling yourself.
Beyond the nerds who enable things because they can't see past the ends of their nose when it comes to possible repercussions, there are many, many people who make their career in intelligence for other reasons than the challenge aspects.
You have the "red blooded, bible thumpin" American Hero types who view their job through a filter that tells them that anything done in the name of America must be a good thing. These guys are damned near impossible to turn because they sincerely believe the story they've told themselves. Generally the way to get at them is via their repressed urges. For example trapping them in a "sin" sting and threatening to make the deviant behavior known unless they divulge some puzzle piece that is unlikely to ever link back to them and then the evidence against them will simply evaporate.
The second type are the career people who are only concerned about their career. They do blend into the first type, there is significant overlap, but the difference is they aren't doing what they do for America. They are doing what they do because they like being in the shadows and acting like a puppet master. Generally these guys become double agents once compromised, not because of dirt, but because they like the added sense of control on the world scene from playing both sides against eachother. These guys and gals are sociopaths, for them it is about control but the extra money doesn't hurt either.
The final type are career floaters, these are people who are doing what they do for love of money only. They would rat out their mother for the right size briefcase full of cash. This means exfiltrating sensitive data and selling it to the highest bidder, or simply having a standing customer whom they report to periodically. These are straight up moles, they view themselves as underpaid, under appreciated, and justify their breaches by telling themselves that if they don't then someone else will. The money is right and the intel probably seems mostly harmless. In some cases they are paid by the MB for for data, data which is simply copied to someplace else with no one else the wiser. This type generally start their career with the government and then leave to work for contract companies. This also attracts people like Snowden, who were not compensated with dollars, but with sense of heroism. Kudos to Snowden and the others for their good work in rooting out an illegal operation, but you can bet he did what he did because he felt ignored and unappreciated and not properly compensated. Gaining status as a folk hero was likely a fair trade in his mind.
So here's how the scenario you describe plays out in reality.
Company A has interests in Country B whether it be land, money, infrastructure, natural resources, anything else you can imagine.
Country B is friendly at first to Company A, but eventually this friendliness turns. Perhaps a new regime comes to power, or perhaps it's the old regime trying to placate it's populace, but suddenly company A finds it's interests are no longer protected. Company A is now forced to lobby it's interests with the USA. Depending on how well connected Company A is, this can take the form of lobbying congress, or for the better connected, they just directly influence the intelligence apparatus.
In the case of Dole Pineapple Company, the president of the company was vice president of the USA. However it occurs, the interests of Company A, are now viewed as "the interests of the USA", by an organization with a license to kill and a mission specifically to "further the interests of the USA at home and abroad".
It's important to note that Company A can actually be any group, this includes publicly traded companies, but also privately held companies, uber wealthy individuals and also informal organizations such as the various Mafias.
Once the interests of Company A become American interests in the eyes of the intelligence community, it is then on the intelligence community to realign the interests of Country B with Company A.
This includes but is not limited to further inflaming an already agitated populace and doesn't even stop at assassination. Eventually the problem is resolved when new leadership is installed that is friendly to the interests of Company A, regardless of if the interests of Company A actually align with overall American interests.
This is why we appear to support dictators. The new leadership is doing what the old leadership failed to do and that is to protect the corporate interests of Company A, regardless of who Company A really is.
In the meantime the apparatus to do this is driven from the top down. Each cog in the machine has it's own teeth in the machine, it's own reason for turning, but so long as the net effect is that those gears are all turning towards the ultimate goals of Company A, then all cogs are kept in place. It is only when a cog fails to turn properly that it is removed, regardless of it's reason for failing to turn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @10:26PM
Dated. MXczZTV0NnVxYXFhMzM2Ng==
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday November 05 2018, @07:50PM (1 child)
It was at CIA.gov and was just a text entry field with a submit button. I wrote something like "keep up the good work" then submitted it.
If I bookmarked it, that was a long time ago in a wifi spot far far away.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @10:36PM
DO YOU REALIZE YOU JUST KILLED ALL AMERICAN AGENTS?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday November 05 2018, @07:54PM (4 children)
One anonymous star [cia.gov] is carved for each agent who died.
That there aren't more stars leads me to speculate that the CIA doesn't have many clandestine field against, rather than have contractors and volunteer assets.
There's quite a lot of unclassified public material on the CIA's website. I read some of it not long ago, all that was advice for analysts about avoiding personal bias when writing intelligence assessments.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Virindi on Monday November 05 2018, @09:33PM (1 child)
Knowing how spies like mind games, the number of stars on the wall is probably manipulated.
And it probably wouldn't count people working for the US who were not Americans anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @11:16PM
Nobody likes a traitor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 06 2018, @03:40AM
The spies that died were just assets, not field personnel.*
*I have no inside knowledge about any of this.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday November 06 2018, @11:04AM
It does seem a bit low considering their line of business. Just from the link you gave one can extrapolate some data.
1947 * (CIA started, so 0?)
1974 31 stars
1987 50 stars
2009 90 stars
2017 129 stars
So in the first 30 something years they lost 31 people, or about one per year. This is during the early parts of the cold war. During the next 10 year period they lose about 20 more people, or pretty much almost doubling their loses per year compared to the previous period. This is at the height and end of the cold war. For the following 20 years they just keep going and add another 40 stars to the wall, death count per year seems stable at about 2 per year. Then with the war on terror in full swing in less then 10 years they add 40 more stars to the wall.
So either the world got a fuckton more dangerous, or the enemies got more competent or there might just have been more of them. I would assume the amount of employees or assets have also gone up quite a bit over the years so it might actually have become less risk of death per year per employee but it's hard to tell.
I guess one could flesh this out a bit if one could pinpoint large and important events on a historical scale that caused a lot of fatalities in one fell swoop. The CIA are not very forthcoming on this end but Wikipedia is. In the early days of the list a lot of them seem to die in airplane crashes, then there is the Vietnam war era and lots of agents dying the south east Asia and more recently as noted they seem to die in incidents that can be linked to the War on Terror.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Memorial_Wall [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @08:29PM (2 children)
Is it ironic (in the classic sense of the word) that the same people who will bitch about how dumb you have to be to make it that easy to find this stuff out, and OMG the horror and loss of life this caused, are the same ones who champion Wikileaks dumping clandestine info? Or are they just bald faced hypocrites?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @08:48PM
I don't think you are correct, people horrified about the loss of life are usually the Law & Order types and are not the same people who would praise Wikileaks. Aside from that most people are capable of taking things into context so it isn't always ironic/hypocritical except on the most shallow face value.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Gaaark on Monday November 05 2018, @11:37PM
Wikileaks, Showdown et al are trying to STOP shit like this happening.
If they would listen to people like Snowden or the tech contractor, this would not have happened. Instead you have incompetence and unchanging stupidity and arrogance in the higher-ups and that will NOT change unless some people are exposed FOR that incompetence and stupidity and are fired and things ARE changed.
But no: fire a hero. Force another hero into the arms of the Russians (how STUPID is THAT!?!).
Force ANOTHER hero into exile in an embassy....
...the stupidity goes on and people die. But who cares, right?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @08:53PM (2 children)
It uses to be that they used numbers stations to communicate with people out in the field. These used a one time pad. All you needed was a shortwave radio, which of course is completely untraceable and a common thing that an average person might have. Somebody then thought that numbers stations just seemed too primitive, and then decided that they needed a new high tech upgrade, as if these sorts of things need to keep up with the latest iEverything fads like everything else. Someone who is not a complete fool could easily see that using a web based system for these things is an extremely bad idea since its completely traceable. The stupidity is really remarkable.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Virindi on Monday November 05 2018, @09:41PM
Numbers stations are not completely invulnerable, and for the agent to use it to exfiltrate information would require transmitting themselves.
In the modern era of a million cameras everywhere and everything tracked, and fast communication (and relatively cheap high accuracy clocks), it would not be so hard for a country to set up an automated system to identify them. Having a number of stations which automatically collaborate to triangulate signals is perfectly doable...in fact, it would be quite similar to cellular phone tower technology.
Once you can track the origin of each numbers broadcast, you can correlate that with camera and cellphone tracking data.
Difficult for you or I to do? Maybe (but not crazy impossible). Difficult for an agency with a multibillion dollar black budget? Nope.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday November 05 2018, @10:05PM
Not quite as simple as you make it out to be.
First, numbers stations do still exist. Many of them are now thought to only be backups for other systems, but they are still out there and still transmitting.
There are a couple of problems with numbers stations. The most obvious: They are one-way traffic. If you have someone out there as an agent they are there because there is something they are reporting back. That traffic can also be OTP encoded, but must be transmitted differently because obviously the sender can't just fire up a transmitter.
The second problem: Shortwave radios were common. Every major country in the world used to have an at-least daily broadcast of information over shortwave. Now, however? Here's [radioworld.com] an interesting article about the state of shortwave. Sure, VOA and BBC still exist in some select areas. Radio Havana Cuba still transmits nightly the last time I checked a few months ago. But these days being a shortwave listener marks you as distinct and different. There are certainly areas of the world where having a computer might also mark you. But a lot less so than shortwave these days.
One problem with an OTP solution is that the pads must still be distributed. There must still be a way, using tradecraft, to occasionally get the decoding materials into the hands of the receiver. Your pad can only last for the number of messages it was set up for. And those pads have to be kept somewhere. You can note that computers [wikipedia.org] didn't help the Wasp Network much.... but neither would have a code book for decipherment - by the time they got to physical searches of those people they already had a clue and likely would have found hardcopy code books had they existed. And... shortwave didn't help them, either, instead giving the smoking gun evidence needed to convict them.
Finally, remember that their failures often do get exposed. But the successes? Not so much. Keep in mind that the CIA is certainly still in contact with sources today. Using shortwave? I doubt it. Maybe they learned and upped their game too, no?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday November 05 2018, @10:08PM (1 child)
From the horse's mouth [cia.gov]...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday November 05 2018, @11:47PM
Sheit! It's right there!
"Managers and Supervisors: To lower morale and production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work."
"Promote useless, stupid people in the CIA! Gotcha, boss-man, Mr. Gormachov!"
Reminds me of that movie "How to get ahead in the CIA without really trying!"...just be stupid be incompetent. ;)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday November 06 2018, @02:17AM (2 children)
I wonder why Putin does not kill American agents by dozens...
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday November 06 2018, @11:17AM (1 child)
Apparently the russian station used a different comms technique. According to El Reg at least.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday November 06 2018, @04:25PM
In other words, someone wasn't totally incompetent.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"