The Cyber Independent Testing Lab is a security measurement company founded by Mudge Zadko (previously), late of the Cult of the Dead Cow and l0pht Heavy Industries and the NSA's Tailored Access Operations Group; it has a unique method for assessing the security of devices derived from methods developed by Mudge at the NSA.
Former NSA contractor Harold Martin today changed his plea to guilty, on charges of willful retention of national defense information.
Mich from ha.cking bought a $25 "S8 data line locator" device — a cellular spying tool, disguised as a USB cable and marketed to the general public — and did a teardown of the gadget, offering a glimpse into the world of "trickle down surveillance" where the kinds of surveillance tools used by the NSA are turned into products and sold to randos over the internet for $25.
The University of Toronto's Citizen Lab (previously) is one of the world's leading research centers for cybersecurity analysis, and they are the first port of call for many civil society groups when they are targeted by governments and cyber-militias.
A former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor who worked with the National Security Agency will face charges of espionage in a case involving 50 terabytes or more of highly sensitive NSA data the government says were stolen. — Read the rest
Rob Joyce runs the NSA's Tailored Access Operations group, the spies who figure out how to hack systems, publishing a spook's version of the Skymall catalog, filled with software and hardware that other spies can order for use.
Bruce Schneier weighs in on last week's ridiculous UK government talking points memo that Murdoch's Sunday Times dutifully published as front-page news.
For more than decade, a shadowy, heavily resourced, sophisticated hacker group that Kaspersky Labs calls the Equation Group has committed a string of daring, cutting-edge information attacks, likely at the behest of the NSA.
The dirty tricks used by JTRIG — the toolsmiths of the UK spy agency GCHQ — have been published, with details on how the agency manipulates public opinion, censors Youtube, games pageview statistics, spy on Ebay use, conduct DDoS attacks, and connect two unsuspecting parties with one another by phone.
One of the Snowden documents published by Glenn Greenwald with the release of his new book is a photo showing an actual NSA Tailored Access Operations team sabotaging a Cisco router before it is exported, a practice reported earlier this week in a story Greenwald wrote for the Guardian. — Read the rest
Sunday's Snowden leaks detailing the Tailored Access Operations group — the NSA's exploit-farming, computer-attacking "plumbers" — and the ANT's catalog of attacks on common computer equipment and software — were accompanied by a lecture by Jacob Appelbaum at the 30th Chaos Communications Congress. — Read the rest
A Snowden leak accompanying today's story on the NSA's Tailored Access Operations group (TAO) details the NSA's toolbox of exploits, developed by an NSA group called ANT (Advanced or Access Network Technology).
ANT's catalog runs to 50 pages, and lists electronic break-in tools, wiretaps, and other spook toys. — Read the rest
A new Snowden leak disclosed in Der Spiegel details the operations of the NSA's Tailored Access Operations group (TAO), the "plumbers" of the spy agency who collect and deploy exploits to infiltrate computer systems. Reportedly, Edward Snowden turned down a chance join the group. — Read the rest
An anonymous former NSA colleague of Edward Snowden described his career at the Agency to Forbes's Andy Greenberg, giving an account of a gifted, principled, compassionate technical "genius" who came to work in his EFF NSA spying hoodie (these were available to donors who gave at least $250 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation). — Read the rest
A new set of leaked NSA slides from the Snowden trove was published in the Washington Post today, detailing NSA/GCHQ's use of Web cookies (including Google's PREF cookie) to uniquely identify people as they move around the Web, in order to target them and compromise them. — Read the rest
A new Snowden leak sheds more light on Tailored Access Operations, a catalog of standard attacks against routers and other Internet infrastructure.
The new leak details the deployment of malware against 50,000 computer networks worldwide, in cooperation with GCHQ, the British spy agency. — Read the rest
