Press Trust of India
Washington
February 9, 2014
US whistleblower Edward Snowden, (click here) who honed his hacking skills in India, used inexpensive and widely available software to “scrape” the National Security Agency’s networks, according to American intelligence officials probing his high-profile case. Using “web crawler” software designed to search, index and back up a website, 30-year-old Snowden “scraped data out of our systems” while he went about his day job, The New York Times quoted a senior intelligence official as saying.
"We do not believe this was an individual sitting at a machine and downloading this much material in sequence,” the official said. The process by which Snowden gained access to a huge trove of the country’s most highly classified documents was “quite automated” and the former CIA contractor kept at it even after he was briefly challenged by agency officials.
The findings are striking because the NSA’s mission includes protecting America’s most sensitive military and intelligence computer systems from cyber attacks, especially the sophisticated attacks that emanate from Russia and China, the report said. In contrast, Snowden’s “insider attack” was hardly sophisticated and should have been easily detected, investigators found. Snowden had broad access to the NSA’s complete files because he was working as a technology contractor for the agency in Hawaii, helping to manage the agency’s computer systems in an outpost that focuses on China and North Korea....
Really.
By Amber Corrin
April 12, 2013
...DOD and DHS (click here) both receive substantial funding in the budget, including close to $5 billion in cyber funding for the Pentagon. At DHS, an overall budget of $39 billion for fiscal 2014 will go toward "core homeland security functions, such as transportation security, cybersecurity and border security," according to the President's proposal.
The DHS figure includes nearly $500 million for cybersecurity research and development and almost $1 billion expressly for the protection of federal computers and networks against malicious cyber activity....
So, what was this all about?
Jun. 28, 2010
On February 16, 2010, (click here) a bipartisan group of former senior administration and national security officials participated in a simulated cyber attack on the United States—Cyber ShockWave. The simulation, which was moderated by Wolf Blitzer and broadcast as a special on CNN, provided an unprecedented look at how the government would respond to a large-scale cyber crisis affecting much of the nation....
Washington
February 9, 2014
US whistleblower Edward Snowden, (click here) who honed his hacking skills in India, used inexpensive and widely available software to “scrape” the National Security Agency’s networks, according to American intelligence officials probing his high-profile case. Using “web crawler” software designed to search, index and back up a website, 30-year-old Snowden “scraped data out of our systems” while he went about his day job, The New York Times quoted a senior intelligence official as saying.
"We do not believe this was an individual sitting at a machine and downloading this much material in sequence,” the official said. The process by which Snowden gained access to a huge trove of the country’s most highly classified documents was “quite automated” and the former CIA contractor kept at it even after he was briefly challenged by agency officials.
The findings are striking because the NSA’s mission includes protecting America’s most sensitive military and intelligence computer systems from cyber attacks, especially the sophisticated attacks that emanate from Russia and China, the report said. In contrast, Snowden’s “insider attack” was hardly sophisticated and should have been easily detected, investigators found. Snowden had broad access to the NSA’s complete files because he was working as a technology contractor for the agency in Hawaii, helping to manage the agency’s computer systems in an outpost that focuses on China and North Korea....
Really.
By Amber Corrin
April 12, 2013
...DOD and DHS (click here) both receive substantial funding in the budget, including close to $5 billion in cyber funding for the Pentagon. At DHS, an overall budget of $39 billion for fiscal 2014 will go toward "core homeland security functions, such as transportation security, cybersecurity and border security," according to the President's proposal.
The DHS figure includes nearly $500 million for cybersecurity research and development and almost $1 billion expressly for the protection of federal computers and networks against malicious cyber activity....
So, what was this all about?
Jun. 28, 2010
On February 16, 2010, (click here) a bipartisan group of former senior administration and national security officials participated in a simulated cyber attack on the United States—Cyber ShockWave. The simulation, which was moderated by Wolf Blitzer and broadcast as a special on CNN, provided an unprecedented look at how the government would respond to a large-scale cyber crisis affecting much of the nation....
