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c0lo writes:

The international edition of Der Spiegel reports Snowden documents reveal NSA and GCHQ are seeking to map the entire Internet, including end-user devices. In pursuing that goal, they have broken into networks belonging to Deutsche Telekom, Netcologne, German satellite teleport operators Stellar, Cetel, and IABG; they also designated Stellar's CEO Christian Steffen and nine other employees for surveillance.

Treasure Map [the program under which the breach reportedly happened] [...] it is the mandate for a massive raid on the digital world. It aims to map the Internet, and not just the large traffic channels, such as telecommunications cables. It also seeks to identify the devices across which our data flows, so-called routers.

Treasure Map graphics don't just provide detailed views of German cable and satellite networks. Red markings also reveal to agents which carriers and internal company networks FiveEyes agencies claim to have already accessed. Of particular interest from the German perspective are two "Autonomous Systems" (AS) — networks — marked in red. They are labeled Deutsche Telekom AG and Netcologne, a Cologne-based provider.

The legend for the graphics in question explains the meaning behind the red markings: "Red Core Nodes: SIGINT Collection access points within AS." SIGINT refers to signals intelligence. In other words, networks marked with a red dot are under observation.

Telekom and Netcologne are not the first German companies to have been successfully hacked by Anglo-American intelligence agencies, according to their own documents. In March, SPIEGEL reported on the large-scale attack by the British agency GCHQ on German satellite teleport operators Stellar, Cetel, and IABG. Such providers offer satellite Internet connections to remote regions of the world. All three companies are marked red on the Treasuremap graphic, meaning that the NSA and its partner agencies have, according to their documents, internal "Collection Access Points."

[Stellar] CEO Steffen commented on the document with a terse "Fuck!" He considers it to be final proof that his company's systems were illegally breached. "The hacked server stood behind our company's own firewall," he said. "The only way of accessing it is if you first successfully break into our network."

[...] "A cyber-attack of this nature is a clear criminal offense under German law," he said. "I want to know why we were a target and exactly how the attack against us was conducted — if for no other reason than to be able to protect myself and my customers from this happening again." Six weeks ago, Steffen wrote a letter to the British government asking for an explanation, but he has not received an answer. Both GCHQ and NSA have likewise declined comment on the matter.