Latest Snowden Leaks Show GCHQ Gleefully Hacking Belgian Telco
from the this-pleases-the-spies dept
Another day, another report on a leaked Snowden document, this time showing how the UK's GCHQ, using technology from the NSA, gleefully hacked into Belgian telco giant Belgacom's system.According to the slides in the GCHQ presentation, the attack was directed at several Belgacom employees and involved the planting of a highly developed attack technology referred to as a "Quantum Insert" ("QI"). It appears to be a method with which the person being targeted, without their knowledge, is redirected to websites that then plant malware on their computers that can then manipulate them. Some of the employees whose computers were infiltrated had "good access" to important parts of Belgacom's infrastructure, and this seemed to please the British spies, according to the slides.Once again, despite various denials, it appears that the NSA/GCHQ have been hacking into companies, rather than directly targeting individuals or terrorist organizations. This leads to questions about the possibility of economic espionage, but also about using these hacked systems for further attacks. As the report notes, this could be especially concerning, given that Belgacom serves the EU Parliament, the EU Council and the EU Commission -- all of whom have been named as "targets" of the NSA (and, by extension, GCHQ, even as the UK is a member of the EU).
The documents also suggest that GCHQ continued to probe the areas of infrastructure to which the targeted employees had access. The undated presentation states that they were on the verge of accessing the Belgians' central roaming router. The router is used to process international traffic. According to the presentation, the British wanted to use this access for complex attacks ("Man in the Middle" attacks) on smartphone users. The head of GCHQ's Network Analysis Centre (NAC) described Operation Socialist in the presentation as a "success."
As I've said in the past, I'm a lot less disturbed by intelligence gathering on foreign politicians -- that's just standard every day expected espionage activity. However, hacking into companies to do that espionage begins to cross some very questionable lines that could lead to massive economic harm, as well as the ability to mask the surveillance by government agencies as somehow being the fault of those companies.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: economic espionage, europe, gchq, hacking, nsa, surveillance
Companies: belgacom
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Suddenly the HD destruction orders make a lot more sense
Unfortunately for them(and fortunately for everyone else), such actions were so utterly futile, cannot wait to see how they try and defend this one.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Beginning to see this as routine, eh?
We're all coming to accept it as normal, as I conjectured from the start: the open fascism of mega-corporations spying for NSA had to come out sometime, so just dump it -- with a "hero" to focus on, David vs Goliath, nothing really new, a distracting "chase", putting focus on the gov't as the bad guys but individuals are actually trying to do their best to balance spying vs privacy according to what's-her-Hoelzer, and anyway, the gov't is too big and remote so anger diffuses; then the story is helped by the co-conspirator mega-corps pretending to file suit -- but only to be allowed to put out some uncheckable numbers... Nothing yet has happened out of my expectations: the criminals are still walking free.
And Mike, you really don't help the cause of freedom by yet again focusing on how this may affect corporations and worrying about their bottom lines! Try to show some concern for "natural" persons, who are spied on by both gov't and corporations.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
While the info is I am sure of use to the NSA/GCHQ, you can bet that somewhere in this line of data gathering is some one looking to make a nice and tidy rest bed with some corporate HQ and willing to feed that data to get it.
Given that the NSA can't seem to tell who looks at what, nor who accesses what, who the frig would know? If it turns out the average spy without network administrator privileges can't then the money/promise of position can just as easily be given to the administrator. Obviously the NSA can't tell but we haven't heard a lot about the GCHQ. Are they as badly managed?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The whole "terrorist" thing, is just a cover story, to distract attention away from the true purpose of these sinister spy programs.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Gleefully?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Say what?
Step 1) send official looking email to victim
Step 2) redirect victim to official looking website
Step 3) own clueless victim with drive-by or zero-day exploit.
Step 4) Beers.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
"See how forthright we are with the people, now you can trust us!"
Of course no one would believe it anyway since the government and the NSA can't seem to be honest about anything that is going on.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Which da What?
What about all the surreptitious attacks that are found out by the 'foes' that the 'good guys' haven't found out about?
The 'good guys' go hunting for 'terrorists' but, without their knowledge, get owned by the 'foes'. Who can say it didn't happen? They sure can't.
This is a circular game, and the 'circle' between liberty and security is becoming more of a semi-circular elongation of a weirdly un-concentric parabola. If this describes a really weird shape, then I got it right.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Total Information Awareness
The Stasi archives seems like a bedtime story compared to these NSA revelations. Now is this how you build a democracy ?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Phorm
Given what we know now that precedent would have made it a lot harder to claim what GCHQ was up to was "within the law", guessing some of the 'anti phorm' stuff being developed before it more or less collapsed as the telcos walked away would have alos highlighted some of this sort of stuff
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Belgium foreign office also
http://www.deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws.english/News/130919_hacking
I suspect NSA has enough info/leverage on Belgium politicians to make the Belgium democracy as much a sham as the EU and UK ones. We vote in a guy, but they all do the NSA agenda whether Labour or Conservative.
USSR mk 2, with UK as East German Stasi nation, and NSA as KGB.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Frankly, I am less concerned about what systems they are able to surveil, and more concerned that they perform such surveillance under a system that is regularly and strictly audited to reduce the possibility of misuse (with draconian penalties being the rule for those who misuse positions of trust).
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Apparently staying within the law isn't one of the requirements? I'm sure it is. There's no immunity granted to GCHQ and no authorization from Parliament to break other countries laws let alone the UKs.
" a system that is regularly and strictly audited"
If you couldn't stick within the law, will you stick within the audit and it's lesser penalties? No of course not, you want the lesser penalties.
GCHQ's currently claim to spy on Brits is that Foreign Secretary William Hague can authorize targetted warrants of Brits for foreign countries, and [magic thinking] targetted can mean 'every Brit', since 'every' is a target... right?
So he can authorize blanket surveillance of every Brits on behalf of the USA's NSA. And if anyone complains he pretends its all about terrorists, even the commercial and political spying.
Did NSA do him any favors in his political career? Because HE AUTHORIZED SPYING ON BRITS FOR THE NSA IN VIOLATION OF UK LAW! FFS! It doesn't become more a clear cut case of a traitor to his country than that.
Did none of you in GCHQ stop and think of all the anti-UK abuses the NSA could use that data for? Did none of you stop and think you were actually trying to get a grip on Belgium's telecoms to get a grip on the EU politicians comms traffic?
Are you all f*ing morons in Stasi land?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Transparent troll
You are a troll (attempting to get people to hate the message cause you said it)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
It's like...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Waiting. For. It.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Waiting. For. It.
The only people you would upset are your own "EU", the Scots, Welsh, and N Irish
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Beginning to see this as routine, eh?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
"I don't think anybody should be fooled by the promises of surveillance to tackle terrorism. "
I would change that to: I don't think any rational person should be fooled......
There are far to many mindless people. To many:
"I don't want to think about that.."
"The government is much smarter than us, so they know best"
"What happened last night on Dancing with the Stars."
"What have you got to hide?"
Etc, Etc, Etc.
Rationalization is far easier than rational thought.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Actually Doing their job?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Transparent troll
Unless copyright is involved. Then out_of_the_blue's true persona emerges: a pro-corporatist pro-artist-enslavenment shill.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Transparent troll
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]