It turns out, according to the latest revelations from the Edward Snowden documents, that the NSA has infected more than 50,000 networks worldwide with malicious computer software that turns those computers effectively into ‘sleeper cells‘ that can be exploited by the NSA when it wants.
The malware can be controlled remotely and be turned on and off at will. The ‘implants’ act as digital ‘sleeper cells’ that can be activated with a single push of a button. According to the Washington Post, the NSA has been carrying out this type of cyber operation since 1998.
…The NSA declined to comment and referred to the US Government. A government spokesperson states that any disclosure of classified material is harmful to our national security.
The US government has come down extremely harshly on hackers as can be seen by what they did to people like Aaron Swartz and Anonymous. It is clear that this is because they do not want any rivals to their own hacking. They realize that hackers are the real threat to their desire of global dominance of information networks because they have the skills to find out and expose their wrongdoing.
I know this is off-topic, but I didn’t know where to put it.
Historic elections in Honduras today.
Wait, you mean the ends don’t justify the means?!?!
This really is tragic. How much has the US government weakened internet security by doing this?
Let me elaborate: some of the systems that they penetrated will be systems that are used to access critical infrastructure, administrative nodes, important sites. It’s not just stealing data -- it means that there are now installed backdoors all over the place, and they potentially weaken all the systems that those systems connect to. What happens when hackers find out (as they will) how to access the NSA backdoors? Instant US-government funded botnet!
This is an incredibly bad idea and if General Alexander has his job next week, it represents a horrible policy blunder by the administration.
It is also illegal. Penetrating a person’s system (if I did it) is a serious crime. There is no way they got a court to approve electronic black bag jobs of this magnitude.
As with everything else the NSA has been doing, this is extremely dangerous. What one fool can do another can. I should think we are already at the point where many of the targets of this nonsense have detected it and established counter-measures to remotely control US government systems. I have no doubt that all those NSA databases are routinely queried by chinese, russians, iranians and anybody else interested in monitoring their own dissidents (at little or no data collection cost to themselves -- thanks NSA)….does the NSA think for a moment that the people of the rest of the world are idiots?