Malcolm Gladwell on Spies
Translation: the proper function of spies is to remind those who rely on spies that the kinds of thing found out by spies can’t be trusted.
Nice article on the British Operation Mincemeat in World War II.
Entries Tagged "espionage"
Page 15 of 20
Even More on the al-Mabhouh Assassination
This, from a former CIA chief of station:
The point is that in this day and time, with ubiquitous surveillance cameras, the ability to comprehensively analyse patterns of cell phone and credit card use, computerised records of travel documents which can be shared in the blink of an eye, the growing use of biometrics and machine-readable passports, and the ability of governments to share vast amounts of travel and security-related information almost instantaneously, it is virtually impossible for clandestine operatives not to leave behind a vast electronic trail which, if and when there is reason to examine it in detail, will amount to a huge body of evidence.
A not-terribly flattering article about Mossad:
It would be surprising if a key part of this extraordinary story did not turn out to be the role played by Palestinians. It is still Mossad practice to recruit double agents, just as it was with the PLO back in the 1970s. News of the arrest in Damascus of another senior Hamas operative though denied by Mash’al seems to point in this direction. Two other Palestinians extradited from Jordan to Dubai are members of the Hamas armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam brigades, suggesting treachery may indeed have been involved. Previous assassinations have involved a Palestinian agent identifying the target.
There’s no proof, of course, that Mossad was behind this operation. But the author is certainly right that the Palestinians believe that Mossad was behind it.
The Cold Spy lists what he sees as the mistakes made:
1. Using passport names of real people not connected with the operation.
2. Airport arrival without disguises in play thus showing your real faces.
3. Not anticipating the wide use of surveillance cameras in Dubai.
4. Checking into several hotels prior to checking in at the target hotel thus bringing suspicion on your entire operation.
5. Checking into the same hotel that the last person on the team checked into in order to change disguises.
6. Not anticipating the reaction that the local police had upon discovery of the crime, and their subsequent use of surveillance cameras in showing your entire operation to the world in order to send you a message that such actions or activities will not be tolerated on their soil.
7. Not anticipating the use of surveillance camera footage being posted on YouTube, thus showing everything about your operation right down to your faces and use of disguises to the masses around the world.
8. Using 11 people for a job that one person could have done without all the negative attention to the operation. For example, it could have been as simple as a robbery on the street with a subsequent shooting to cover it all up for what it really was.
9. Using too much sophistication in the operation showing it to be a high level intelligence/hit operation, as opposed to a simple matter using one person to carry out the assignment who was either used as a cutout or an expendable person which was then eliminated after the job was completed, thus covering all your tracks without one shred of evidence leading back to the original order for the hit.
10. Arriving too close to the date or time of the hit. Had the team arrived a few weeks earlier they could have established a presence in the city thus seeing all the problems associated with carrying out said assignment thus calling it off or having a counter plan whereby something else could have been tried elsewhere or in another country.
11. And to take everything to 11 points, not even noticing (which many on your team did in fact notice) all the surveillance you were under, and not calling the entire thing off because of it, and because you failed to see all of your mistakes made so far and then not calling it off because of them.
I disagree with a bunch of those.
My previous two blog posts on the topic.
EDITED TO ADD (3/22): The Israeli public believes Mossad was behind the assassination, too.
EDITED TO ADD (4/13): The Cold Spy responds in comments. Actually, there’s lots of interesting discussion in the comments.
Homebrew Cryptography
Nice article about a would-be spy and his homebrew pencil-and-paper cryptography.
More Details on the Chinese Attack Against Google
Three weeks ago, Google announced a sophisticated attack against them from China. There have been some interesting technical details since then. And the NSA is helping Google analyze the attack.
The rumor that China used a system Google put in place to enable lawful intercepts, which I used as a news hook for this essay, has not been confirmed. At this point, I doubt that it’s true.
EDITED TO ADD (2/12): Good article.
World's Largest Data Collector Teams Up With World's Largest Data Collector
Does anyone think this is a good idea?
Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google—and its users—from future attack.
EPIC has filed a Freedom of Information Act Request, asking for records pertaining to the partnership. That would certainly help, because otherwise we have no idea what’s actually going on.
I’ve already written about why the NSA should not be in charge of our nation’s cyber security.
Me on Chinese Hacking and Enabling Surveillance
CNN.com just published an essay of mine on China’s hacking of Google, an update of this essay.
EDITED TO ADD (2/8): An essay along similar lines.
Google vs. China
I’m not sure what I can add to this: politically motivated attacks against Gmail from China. I’ve previously written about hacking from China. Shishir Nagaraja and Ross Anderson wrote a report specifically describing how the Chinese have been hacking groups that are politically opposed to them. I’ve previously written about censorship, Chinese and otherwise. I’ve previously written about broad government eavesdropping on the Internet, Chinese and otherwise. Seems that the Chinese got in through back doors installed to facilitate government eavesdropping, which I even talked about in my essay on eavesdropping. This new attack seems to be highly sophisticated, which is no surprise.
This isn’t a new story, and I wouldn’t have mentioned it at all if it weren’t for the surreal sentence at the bottom of this paragraph:
The Google-China flap has already reignited the debate over global censorship, reinvigorating human rights groups drawing attention to abuses in the country and prompting U.S. politicians to take a hard look at trade relations. The Obama administration issued statements of support for Google, and members of Congress are pushing to revive a bill banning U.S. tech companies from working with governments that digitally spy on their citizens.
Of course, the bill won’t go anywhere, but shouldn’t someone inform those members of Congress about what’s been going on in the United States for the past eight years?
In related news, Google has enabled https by default for Gmail users. In June 2009, I cosigned a letter to the CEO of Google asking for this change. It’s a good thing.
EDITED TO ADD (1/19): Commentary on Google’s bargaining position.
Mossad Hacked Syrian Official's Computer
It was unattended in a hotel room at the time:
Israel’s Mossad espionage agency used Trojan Horse programs to gather intelligence about a nuclear facility in Syria the Israel Defense Forces destroyed in 2007, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported Monday.
According to the magazine, Mossad agents in London planted the malware on the computer of a Syrian official who was staying in the British capital; he was at a hotel in the upscale neighborhood of Kensington at the time.
The program copied the details of Syria’s illicit nuclear program and sent them directly to the Mossad agents’ computers, the report said.
Remember the evil maid attack: if an attacker gets hold of your computer temporarily, he can bypass your encryption software.
UK Defense Security Manual Leaked
Wow. It’s over 2,000 pages, so it’ll take time to make any sense of. According to Ross Anderson, who’s given it a quick look over, “it seems to be the bureaucratic equivalent of spaghetti code: a hodgepodge of things written by people from different backgrounds, and with different degrees of clue, in different decades.”
The computer security stuff starts at page 1,531.
EDITED TO ADD (10/6): An article.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.