N.S.A. Devises Radio Pathway Into Computers

I do understand that it is now the status quo to disavow everything the NSA is, but foreign intelligence gathering is their mission and releasing these details simply doesn&#x27;t help the cause of fixing the NSA&#x27;s less savoury incursions.<p>While arguably any foreign intelligence agency of note isn&#x27;t going to be caught off guard by these leaks, leaking these details does offer political ammunition to the very people who stand to gain from the expansion of the NSA&#x27;s mission into civilian data gathering. It helps to make the case that the leaks aren&#x27;t such a good thing after all and are compromising the intelligence gathering apparatus of the US of A. Add a bit of spin and you can quickly use this to get back to business as usual and people will actually support them as now it&#x27;ll become a matter of identity instead of what it should be - a surgical exploration of a cancer afflicting a nation state.

&quot;We do not use foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies&quot;<p>Nobody with an unspoiled mind and following the news last year will believe this bullshit.<p>If there is anything, people all over the world (also in the US) should have learned: Statements from people of some federal US organisations can not be believed at all -- in many cases the complete opposite is true.

The only thing that&#x27;s more disappointing than the NSA spying is the NYT sitting on this scoop for more than a year, and letting Der Spiegel break it. Only slightly less amazing is that Der Spiegel and Jacob Applebaum were talking about this more than two weeks ago, and the NYT diddled until now. Incredible. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vILAlhwUgIU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=vILAlhwUgIU</a>

Given that the NSA&#x27;s mission is to do surveillance against foreign targets (&quot;There is no evidence that the N.S.A. has implanted its software or used its radio frequency technology inside the United States.&quot;)...the techniques described here actually seem to be in line of what you imagine the NSA is <i>supposed</i> to be doing. At least it&#x27;s surveillance that requires them to have a physical targeted presence, rather than just drinking from the telecommunications firehose.

This sounds like a non-issue to me. Any person on this site could create little USB devices for stealing data. It&#x27;s nothing special or new. I thought I was going to hear that they&#x27;re light years beyond Tempest[1] or something. Feels good to finally hear an NSA story that doesn&#x27;t depress me.<p>1. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename)" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Tempest_(codename)</a>

&quot;In most cases, the radio frequency hardware must be physically inserted by a spy, a <i>manufacturer</i> or an unwitting user.&quot; [emphasis added]

Transmit as far as &quot;EIGHT Miles&quot;. Does anyone know what type of power this would take? I imagine if they used a less noisy frequency combined with sensitive receiving equipment, it would not take much. I used to play with CB radios which has a cap at 4W, with a good antenna, one could transmit 7+ miles in good situations.

Well, I suppose it&#x27;s time for the tin-foil-hat crowd to turn their computer cases into a Faraday cages then! Of course, these NSA gizmos might plug into ground and detect radio-induced current fluctuations. Given how many computer cases are metal, this might be the obvious way to go actually. So... Faraday cage and a really expensive ground conditioner?

This is another example of how Snowden has compromised national security by leaking secret information that has nothing to do with American metadata and everything to do with the NSA&#x27;s charter and legal mission.

Sounds like an update to The Thing:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing_(listening_device)" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Thing_(listening_device)</a>

So now one needs to run BSD, air gaped and in a Faraday cage to be &#x27;secure&#x27;... So now what does one do with it

I have to admit I was disappointed these seem to require radio transmitters be added to the device. Was sort of hoping to discover there were little antennas built into Intel processors or nvidia video cards.<p>However, I now know more about what DARPA&#x27;s littlest flying robots will be doing, especially the ones already described as little more than chips with wings.

&gt; Richard A. Clarke, an official in the Clinton and Bush administrations who served as one of the five members of the advisory panel, explained the group’s reasoning in an email last week, saying that “it is more important that we defend ourselves than that we attack others.”<p>Pretty frightening that such things apparently still need to be said.

I remember an article on here a while back of a well known security or cryptology researcher that had a machine get re-infected by unknown malware time and time again without a network connection, who also observed radio waves and thought that was the iv...

So, any chances of finding such a device out in the wild? Suggestions for detecting the most likely used type of radio transmissions? How can they transmit over 5Km with USB power and no antenna?

&gt; The technology, which has been used by the agency since at least 2008, relies on a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards<p>Obviously if someone has physical access to a machine it can be compromised. Replace &quot;USB Cards&quot; with &quot;USB WiFi stick&quot; and you&#x27;ve achieved the same thing.<p>This is just FUD. Machines that are air-gapped from the Internet with tight physical security are as secure as ever.

This article feels like NSA bait to me. It&#x27;s like NYT is trying to make NSA look good.

My favorite part:<p>&quot;The technology, which the agency has used since at least 2008, relies on a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into the computers.&quot;<p>Oh, so they only need physical access to the machine, and then they can do stuff to it? It&#x27;s like magic!

very good use of tax payer money!

badBIOS and now this. Sigh.

oh man when does this stop? these guys are clearly breaking the law all in the name of &quot;keeping us safe from terrorists&quot;. This needs to be stopped. All the perpetrators of this program must be brought to justice with a court that adheres to the principals of democracy and freedom.