Edward Snwoden Used Readily Available and Low Cost Tools To Breech NSA Security

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, an analyst with a U.S. defence contractor, is seen in this still image taken from video during an interview by The Guardian in his hotel room in Hong Kong June 6, 2013. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro offered asylum to former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden on July 5, 2013 in defiance of Washington, which is demanding his arrest for divulging details of secret U.S. spy programs. Picture taken June 6, 2013. MANDATORY CREDIT. Credit: Reuters/Glenn Greenwald/Laura Poitras/Courtesy of The Guardian/Handout via Reuters

Snowden Used Low-Cost Tool to Best N.S.A. -- New York Times

WASHINGTON — Intelligence officials investigating how Edward J. Snowden gained access to a huge trove of the country’s most highly classified documents say they have determined that he used inexpensive and widely available software to “scrape” the National Security Agency’s networks, and kept at it even after he was briefly challenged by agency officials.

Using “web crawler” software designed to search, index and back up a website, Mr. Snowden “scraped data out of our systems” while he went about his day job, according to a senior intelligence official. “We do not believe this was an individual sitting at a machine and downloading this much material in sequence,” the official said. The process, he added, was “quite automated.”

The findings are striking because the N.S.A.’s mission includes protecting the nation’s most sensitive military and intelligence computer systems from cyberattacks, especially the sophisticated attacks that emanate from Russia and China. Mr. Snowden’s “insider attack,” by contrast, was hardly sophisticated and should have been easily detected, investigators found.

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My Comment: You would think that the NSA .... with all of it's money and expertise .... would have prevented such a breech. Clearly they were either asleep and/or to overconfident on their own capabilities and security measures. What an expensive and costly way to learn from your mistakes.