N.S.A.
Devises Radio Pathway Into Computers
(THIS REALLY IS OUTRAGEOUS) blogger says:
The National Security Agency has implanted software in
nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to
conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway
for launching cyber attacks.
While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to
computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology
that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not
connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer experts and
American officials.
The technology, which the agency has used since at least
2008, relies on a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from
tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into the computers.
In some cases, they are sent to a briefcase-size relay station that
intelligence agencies can set up miles away from the target.
“What’s new here is
the scale and the sophistication of the intelligence agency’s ability to get
into computers and networks to which no one has ever had access before,” said
James Andrew Lewis, the cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington. “Some of these capabilities have been
around for a while, but the combination of learning how to penetrate systems to
insert software and learning how to do that using radio frequencies has given
the U.S. a window it’s never had before.”
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