A News Aggregator That Covers The World's Major Wars And Conflicts. Military, Political, And Intelligence News Are Also Covered. Occasionally We Will Have Our Own Opinions Or Observations To Make.
Many of the National Security Agency’s most talented cyberthreat hunters have traded the beige corridors and heavily guarded security perimeter of Fort Meade for a surprisingly located new office — in an unsecured suburban office park in Maryland.
Officials say the pedestrian location is exactly the point: The NSA’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center is designed to bring NSA cyber analysts closer to outside threat hunters.
By anchoring the center in a largely unclassified environment, NSA officials say they are trying to reduce bureaucratic barriers and make it easier for agency talent to work more closely with increasingly vital private sector security researchers.
“No guns, no guards, no gates,” Morgan Adamski, the director of the CCC, told CyberScoop in an interview. “We want to have a very friendly environment.”
The rise of web-based devices represents a growing risk to national and personal security, a U.S. intelligence official warned.
Remember way back in 2017, when then-President Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway appeared to suggest the Trump administration may have been spied on with microwaves?
I certainly do, if for no other reason than it put me in the undesirable position of having to partially defend her claim. There's no evidence this occurred — but yes, the capacity exists!
In fact, the topic of household and other internet-connected devices going rogue — or worse, being maliciously controlled by third parties — is a key concern for the National Security Agency. That’s the word I received from a presentation at this year’s AI Summit and IoT World, a California-based tech conference.
WNU Editor: If a device is connected to the internet, it can be physically altered to monitor you. And in an age where everything can be miniaturized, the possibilities are truly endless.
* Tucker Carlson on June 28 told his three million viewers he was spied on by the NSA, with the intelligence agency reading his emails
* On June 29, the NSA denied Carlson was deliberately targeted by the NSA - which is illegal - but did not deny he could have been inadvertently swept up
* On Wednesday it emerged he was allegedly spied on while seeking an interview with Vladimir Putin
* Seeking an interview with a world leader is not unusual: NBC's Keir Simmons sat for a lengthy interview with the Russian leader, which aired on June 14
* Carlson confirmed on Wednesday evening that he had been trying to arrange an interview with the Russian leader, and demanded to know who 'unmasked' him
* Carlson's communications could have been inadvertently recorded, but his identity by law should have been kept a secret: he asked why it wasn't
* The Russian leader met Joe Biden in Geneva on June 16
* U.S. government officials learned about Carlson's efforts to secure the Putin interview, Axios reported
* The 52-year-old on Wednesday said that he was told at a funeral in Washington last week that his emails had been intercepted by the NSA
Tucker Carlson said on Wednesday night that he was trying to arrange an interview with Russian president Vladimir Putin when he 'was spied on by the NSA'.
The Fox News host said that his communications were intercepted by the National Security Agency, and his identity - which should by law have been kept a secret - was 'unmasked' by senior intelligence officials.
Carlson claimed that the content of his emails and texts was then disseminated, in a bid to discredit him.
'Late this spring I contacted a couple of people I thought could help get an interview with the Russian President Vladimir Putin,' Carlson told his viewers.
WNU Editor: The reporter and network that eventually got that interview with Putin was NBC's Keir Simmons on June 14 at Geneva.
Is Tucker Carlson's claims exaggerated?
Not really.
The U.S. intel community has a long history of intercepting and leaking selective communications. Edward Snowden, Michael Flynn, and all the anonymous intel sources that only certain members of the main stream media like to use is more than enough evidence to me that the American people have a problem with a politicized intel community, and that it will need to be addressed one day.
More News On Tucker Carlson's Claims That The NSA Leaked His Private Communications
WNU Editor: Wikileaks, Edward Snowden, and scores of other whistle blowers have provided more than enough evidence over the years that the U.S. intelligence community is monitoring the communications of American citizens and institutions.
Is the NSA monitoring FOX News and Tucker Carlson?
I do not know.
But if history is any indication I would not be too quick to ridicule or disregard Carlson's claim as many in the pundit class are doing right now.
More News On FOX News Saying U.S. Intelligence Is Monitoring Its Communications
Fort Meade, Maryland — One of the most notoriously secretive U.S. intelligence agencies has opened a new facility that it hopes, uncharacteristically, will welcome plenty of outside visitors.
While most of the National Security Agency's (NSA) outposts are closed-off, highly restricted spaces, the agency's newly launched Cybersecurity Collaboration Center, located a few miles outside its main campus in Fort Meade, Maryland, is meant to serve as a gathering point for government and private sector cybersecurity experts to exchange information about hacking threats from adversaries in real time.
Denmark's complicity in the NSA spying scandal against German politicians has been revealed in a joint European media investigation.
Denmark's secret service helped the US National Security Agency (NSA) spy on EU leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a European media investigation published on Sunday revealed.
The disclosure that the US had been spying on its allies first came to light in 2013, but it is only now that journalists have gained access to reports detailing the support given to the NSA by the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (FE).
More News On The US National Security Agency Reportedly Spying On German Chancellor Angela Merkel And Other Top European Politicians With Denmark's Help
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chinese spies used code first developed by the U.S. National Security Agency to support their hacking operations, Israeli researchers said on Monday, another indication of how malicious software developed by governments can boomerang against their creators.
Tel Aviv-based Check Point Software Technologies issued a report noting that some features in a piece of China-linked malware it dubs “Jian” were so similar they could only have been stolen from some of the National Security Agency break-in tools leaked to the internet in 2017.
Yaniv Balmas, Checkpoint’s head of research, called Jian “kind of a copycat, a Chinese replica.”
An end to the “dual hat” arrangement has been debated for years — but the timing raises questions. The plan requires Milley's certification to move ahead.
Trump administration officials at the Pentagon late this week delivered to the Joint Chiefs of Staff a proposal to split up the leadership of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command. It is the latest push to dramatically reshape defense policy advanced by a handful of key political officials who were installed in acting roles in the Pentagon after Donald Trump lost his re-election bid.
A U.S. official confirmed on Saturday that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley — who along with Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller must certify that the move meets certain standards laid out by Congress in 2016 — received the proposal in the last few days.
WNU Editor: I do not think this is going to happen. But here is a good explanation on why Cyber Command and the NSA should be split up .... Split Up NSA and CYBERCOM (Defense One).
More News On Reports That The White House Wants To Split NSA And US Cyber Command
The director of the National Security Agency, Gen. Paul Nakasone, often speaks about "persistent engagement" as a way to keep up pressure on adversaries in cyberspace. Since he took over last year, the spy agency has been pursuing a more assertive approach. Evan Vucci/AP
Meet General Paul Nakasone. He reined in chaos at the NSA and taught the US military how to launch pervasive cyberattacks. And he did it all without you noticing.
IN THE YEARS before he became America's most powerful spy, Paul Nakasone acquired an unusually personal understanding of the country's worst intelligence failures.
Growing up, he was reared on his father Edwin's recollections of December 7, 1941: how Edwin, then age 14, was eating a bowl of cornflakes with Carnation powdered milk when he saw Japanese Zeros racing past the family's screen door on Oahu on their way to attack Pearl Harbor. They were so close that Edwin, who would grow up to become an Army intelligence officer, could see one of the pilots. “I can still remember to this day,” Edwin would recall years later, “that he had his hachimaki—his headband—around, goggles on.”
Secret documents sketch out the worst-case scenario for “a 1918-like pandemic and no effective response.”
The Department of Health and Human Services has recommended that intelligence community personnel have at least three months’ worth of food on hand in the event of an uncontrolled pandemic.
The recommendation was contained in an unclassified influenza contingency plan drafted in 2009 by the National Security Agency. It details the sweeping steps the spy agency should take to keep its personnel safe and working on critical intelligence matters in the event of such a crisis.
The 50-page document — obtained by BuzzFeed News last July following a six-year Freedom of Information Act battle — tracks closely with steps that have now been widely adopted by Americans facing the current coronavirus outbreak, which the World Health Organization officially declared a global pandemic this week. The contingency plan was drafted in response to a 2006 directive from then-president George W. Bush that called upon federal government agencies to implement a "national strategy" for a potential influenza pandemic.
LONDON (Reuters) - Russian hackers piggy-backed on an Iranian cyber-espionage operation to attack government and industry organizations in dozens of countries while masquerading as attackers from the Islamic Republic, British and U.S. officials said on Monday.
The Russian group, known as “Turla” and accused by Estonian and Czech authorities of operating on behalf of Russia’s FSB security service, has used Iranian tools and computer infrastructure to successfully hack in to organizations in at least 20 different countries over the last 18 months, British security officials said.
The hacking campaign, the extent of which has not been previously revealed, was most active in the Middle East but also targeted organizations in Britain, they said.
Paul Chichester, a senior official at Britain’s GCHQ intelligence agency, said the operation shows state-backed hackers are working in a “very crowded space” and developing new attacks and methods to better cover their tracks.
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Former National Security Agency contractor Harold ‘Hal’ Martin was sentenced to nine years in prison after pleading guilty in March to willful retention of national defense information.
Martin admitted to stealing top-secret documents over a 20-year period and storing them at his Glen Burnie home- some, in an unlocked storage shed.
Prosecutors said that Martin took over 50 terabytes of information, 300 times what Edward Snowden — another NSA contractor from Maryland — leaked to the world.
“He’s incredibly embarrassed,” Deb Shaw, Martin’s estranged wife, said. “He let down people he has such incredible high regard for. He feels the weight of the disappointment he looks up to.”
* In 2018 the NSA disclosed it had over-collected hundreds of millions of metadata
* The metadata was of calls and texts sent within the U.S. but not of conversations
* It has now emerged that a similar issue occurred several months afterwards too
* An undisclosed number of cellular data files were recorded, documents reveal
* 'These documents only confirm that this surveillance program is beyond redemption and should be shut down for good,' attorney Patrick Toomey said
The NSA's much maligned phone data collection program was dealt another blow Wednesday, after it emerged it had collected call and text records it wasn't authorized to obtain - the second time such an incident has occurred.
The error, which took place last October, happened several months after the agency said it had purged hundreds of millions of metadata records it had over-collected since 2015, following a similar incident.
Metadata include the numbers and time stamps of calls or texts but does not contain the contents of the conversation.
CBS News is getting an exclusive look at the National Security Agency's secretive outpost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. NSA Hawaii is on the front lines of American intelligence gathering, intercepting communications and monitoring a region that includes China and North Korea.
The NSA is the largest of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies, and this outpost in Hawaii is particularly busy these days as the U.S. shifts its focus from fighting terrorism to a competition between nations for critical information.
WNU Editor: I am surprised that this NSA outpost is in Hawaii and not closer .... like on the island of Guam. I guess (bottom line) a lot of communications go through Hawaii.
The Maryland resident amassed the classified material during 23 years at the agency and investigators have struggled to figure out why he did it.
WASHINGTON — A former contractor for the National Security Agency, the federal government's super-secret codebreaker, pleaded guilty Thursday to charges that he stole and held onto classified government secrets.
Harold Martin of Glen Burnie, Maryland, entered a guilty plea in a Baltimore federal courtroom. When he was arrested in 2016, investigators said thousands of secret and top-secret documents in printed and digital form were found in his house and car.
After Thursday's hearing, his defense lawyers said Martin's actions "were the product of mental illness, not treason."
After two years, the NSA finished rebidding its “Groundbreaker” program and is beginning work on a secretive new set of communications contracts.
The National Security Agency is quietly beginning work on a new series of three communications contracts valued at $6.7 billion.
Details are sparse because the classified contracts—collectively called Greenway—were secretly awarded to telecommunications giant AT&T and defense contractors General Dynamics and ManTech International over the past year. Redacted legal documents following a protest of one of the contracts in March indicate the NSA’s goal is to “technically evolve” its IT environment.
WNU editor: I am not sure if this decision to outsource the agency’s IT operations to industry is the right move. Past NSA's leaks came from people who work in private sector, and they have been incredibly damaging (i.e. Edward Snowden). And while I do understand the cost saving measures and the need to focus on what is your core mission (in the NSA's case it is signal intelligence and protecting America), I am not convinced that when it comes to national security measures this is the policy that should be followed.
The secrets are hidden behind fortified walls in cities across the United States, inside towering, windowless skyscrapers and fortress-like concrete structures that were built to withstand earthquakes and even nuclear attack. Thousands of people pass by the buildings each day and rarely give them a second glance, because their function is not publicly known. They are an integral part of one of the world’s largest telecommunications networks – and they are also linked to a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program.
Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. In each of these cities, The Intercept has identified an AT&T facility containing networking equipment that transports large quantities of internet traffic across the United States and the world. A body of evidence – including classified NSA documents, public records, and interviews with several former AT&T employees – indicates that the buildings are central to an NSA spying initiative that has for years monitored billions of emails, phone calls, and online chats passing across U.S. territory.
WNU Editor: All of these buildings are the same. Few windows. Made primarily of concrete. Plain looking. Nondescript. But I am willing to bet that the security in these places is very tight.
Long before it was at the centre of a huge spying scandal, the US National Security Agency had the communist threat to deal with - and wanted to make sure its staff did not spill secrets.
A vast archive of posters, apparently for display at the spy agency's offices, has been posted online thanks to a freedom of information request from governmentattic.org.
The website asked for "a digital/electronic copy of the NSA old security posters from the 1950s and 1960s", although confusingly it also got one featuring John Travolta.
Two-dozen civil liberties organizations are urging U.S. officials to disclose more details on the more than 500 million call records collected on Americans by the National Security Agency (NSA) last year.
The organizations, which include the American Civil Liberties Union and digital rights group Access Now, say that the information is crucial to determining whether the government is overstepping its authority.
The letters, sent Thursday to the Office of Director of National Intelligence and to the House Judiciary Committee, come following the publication of a transparency report that revealed the spy agency collected 534 million call detail records in 2017, a substantial increase over the previous year.
The command post for any future U.S.-backed cyberwar is now officially open.
Last week, NSA and U.S. Cyber Command leaders posed together and smiled for pictures during a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the completion of a new, state-of-the-art spy bunker named the “Integrated Cyber Center,” or ICC.
Bland in name alone, the groundbreaking facility located inside Fort Meade in Maryland represents the latest step taken by the federal government to equip U.S. spies and a growing force of “cyberwarriors” with the physical infrastructure necessary to combat foreign threats online.
Hackers linked to Russia, China, North Korea and Iran have each respectively penetrated important U.S. political groups, government agencies, entertainment studios and U.S. energy companies in recent years. These types of breaches have led lawmakers to openly question whether the federal government is doing enough to deter hackers.
I have been involved in numerous computer science projects since the 1980s, as well as developing numerous web projects since 1996.
These blogs are a summation of all the information that I read and catalog pertaining to the subjects that interest me.
