QUANTUM Technology Sold by Cyberweapons Arms Manufacturers
Last October, I broke the story about the NSA’s top secret program to inject packets into the Internet backbone: QUANTUM. Specifically, I wrote about how QUANTUMINSERT injects packets into existing Internet connections to redirect a user to an NSA web server codenamed FOXACID to infect the user’s computer. Since then, we’ve learned a lot more about how QUANTUM works, and general details of many other QUANTUM programs.
These techniques make use of the NSA’s privileged position on the Internet backbone. It has TURMOIL computers directly monitoring the Internet infrastructure at providers in the US and around the world, and a system called TURBINE that allows it to perform real-time packet injection into the backbone. Still, there’s nothing about QUANTUM that anyone else with similar access can’t do. There’s a hacker tool called AirPwn that basically performs a QUANTUMINSERT attack on computers on a wireless network.
A new report from Citizen Lab shows that cyberweapons arms manufacturers are selling this type of technology to governments around the world: the US DoD contractor CloudShield Technologies, Italy’s Hacking Team, and Germany’s and the UK’s Gamma International. These programs intercept web connections to sites like Microsoft and Google—YouTube is specially mentioned—and inject malware into users’ computers.
Turkmenistan paid a Swiss company, Dreamlab Technologies—somehow related to the cyberweapons arms manufacturer Gamma International—just under $1M for this capability. Dreamlab also installed the software in Oman. We don’t know what other countries have this capability, but the companies here routinely sell hacking software to totalitarian countries around the world.
There’s some more information in this Washington Post article, and this essay on the Intercept.
In talking about the NSA’s capabilities, I have repeatedly said that today’s secret NSA programs are tomorrow’s PhD dissertations and the next day’s hacker tools. This is exactly what we’re seeing here. By developing these technologies instead of helping defend against them, the NSA—and GCHQ and CSEC—are contributing to the ongoing insecurity of the Internet.
Related: here is an open letter from Citizen Lab’s Ron Deibert to Hacking Team about the nature of Citizen Lab’s research and the misleading defense of Hacking Team’s products.
Benni • August 18, 2014 11:28 AM
Here is an interesting comment about FinFisher from GammaGroup in Munich:
https://netzpolitik.org/2014/gamma-finfisher-gehackt-werbe-videos-von-exploits-und-quelltext-von-finfly-web-veroeffentlicht/#comment-1569882
“33,2 GB from the hacked files are encrypted with a pgp key from “afons.rauscher@vervis.de”. Apparently this is an employee from FinFisher. But according to Wikileaks, Vervis GmBH has licensed surveillance software 2010 from Gamma International. Vervis Comint Services GMBH are based in Rosenheim, this is only 10 kilometers away from Bad Aibling, where BND operates its large listening station. Finfisher itself is developed by GammaGroup international which has its headquaters in Munich, only 10 suburb train minutes away from Pullach, where BND has its headquaters. Are the FinFisher GMBH as well as the companies licensing this technology really front companies of the BND? That BND owns numerous front companies from which it earns money is long known….”
Yep that definitely sounds like BND. Offering spyware to Bahrain, with BND backdoors included, would enable BND to get data on Bahrain dissidents, possibly islamists, and if the Finfisher software is backdoored well enough, BND would have an entry door to hack Bahrein…
BND similarly went to selling products before. I have explained before how BND tried to sell its partially stolen database software to europol:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/06/more_details_on_1.html#c6672979
You want to buy the “Langenscheidt t1” translator software?
http://langenscheidt-t1-englisch-pro.softonic.de/
that was the only product sold by the BND company GMS, which acquired the language software metal from siemens. That way BND could let GMS be swallowed by Learnout and Hauspie, which they then over-hyped at the stock market so that BND could get its hands on the american language companies dictaphone and dragon….
http://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/Die-Bayern-Belgien-Connection-284812.html
In this link there is even a video where learnout admits of working for BND
https://netzpolitik.org/2013/deutsche-forschungen-zu-spracherkennung-fuer-us-geheimdienste-erinnern-an-lernout-hauspie-den-bnd-und-europol/
So the BND selling the surveillance software FinFisher to Bahrein, that would be quite the typical BND style of operations….
Hacking team is an italian company. With BND even running the management of crypto hardware manufacturers in switzerland for introducing backdoors http://cryptome.org/jya/cryptoa2.htm it would not be a surprise when they also run italian malware manufacturers. But today there is no information confirming this. Although distributing malware over youtube would be of their liking…..