Posts tagged GCHQ

Operation Socialist: How GCHQ Spies Hacked Belgium’s Largest Telco

Belgacom, GCHQ, espionage, EU, state sponsored hacking, NOCTURNAL SURGE, MUTANT BROTH, Five Eyes, Sn

The Belgacom hack, he said, is the “first documented example to show one EU member state mounting a cyber attack on another…a breathtaking example of the scale of the state-sponsored hacking problem.” Publicly, Belgacom has played down the extent of the compromise, insisting that only its internal systems were breached and that customers’ data was never found to have been at risk. But secret GCHQ documents show the agency gained access far beyond Belgacom’s internal employee computers and was able to grab encrypted and unencrypted streams of private communications handled by the company.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/13/belgacom-hack-gchq-inside-story/

Submarine Cable Taps

communication, telegeoography, maps, submarine cables, telecom, GCHQ, intercept, surveillance

Documents published on November 25, 2014 by Süddeutsche Zeitung revealed more specific details about submarine cables currently tapped by GCHQ. Previous reporting had made it clear that GCHQ had submarine cable taps created in collusion with companies like Vodafone and BT Cable, but not which specific cables. Seeing Telegeography publishes landing point maps and submarine cable maps it seemed like a worthwhile exercise to better understand what, exactly, the reach of GCHQ’s submarine cable tapping might look like.

https://github.com/lifewinning/submarine-cable-taps

NSA/GCHQ: The HACIENDA Program for Internet Colonization

internet, network, security, NSA, GCHQ, exploit, 0day, ORB, HACIENDA, organized crime

every device is a target for colonization, as each successfully exploited target is theoretically useful as a means to infiltrating another possible target. Port scanning and downloading banners to identify which software is operating on the target system is merely the first step of the attack (Figure 8). Top secret documents from the NSA seen by Heise demonstrate that the involved spy agencies follow the common methodology of online organized crime (Figure 9): reconnaissance (Figure 10) is followed by infection (Figure 11), command and control (Figure 12), and exfiltration (Figure 13). The NSA presentation makes it clear that the agency embraces the mindset of criminals. In the slides, they discuss techniques and then show screenshots of their own tools to support this criminal process (Figure 14, 15 and 16).

http://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/NSA-GCHQ-The-HACIENDA-Program-for-Internet-Colonization–2292681.html

Optic Nerve

Optic Nerve, GCHQ, Yahoo, webcam, intercept, surveillance, unselected

The system, eerily reminiscent of the telescreens evoked in George Orwell’s 1984, was used for experiments in automated facial recognition, to monitor GCHQ’s existing targets, and to discover new targets of interest. Such searches could be used to try to find terror suspects or criminals making use of multiple, anonymous user IDs. Rather than collecting webcam chats in their entirety, the program saved one image every five minutes from the users’ feeds, partly to comply with human rights legislation, and also to avoid overloading GCHQ’s servers. The documents describe these users as “unselected” – intelligence agency parlance for bulk rather than targeted collection.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam-images-internet-yahoo

How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations

th intercept, JTRIG, GCHQ, Snowden, online, reputation, infiltration, disruption, how to

Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: “false flag operations” (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting “negative information” on various forums.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

Spy agencies in covert push to infiltrate virtual world of online gaming

NSA, GCHQ, infiltration, WoW, gaming, real time, everything is under control

To the National Security Agency analyst writing a briefing to his superiors, the situation was clear: their current surveillance efforts were lacking something. The agency’s impressive arsenal of cable taps and sophisticated hacking attacks was not enough. What it really needed was a horde of undercover Orcs.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/09/nsa-spies-online-games-world-warcraft-second-life?CMP=twt_gu