NSA Hackers Get the 'Ungettable' With Rich Catalog of Custom Tools

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/12/nsa-hacking-catalogue/

By Kim Zetter
Threat Level Wired.com
12.30.13

While most Americans spend their time shopping Amazon, Target and 
Apple.com, the National Security Agency’s elite team of hackers spends its 
time shopping a secret high-end catalog of custom tools designed to 
subvert firewalls, servers, and routers made by U.S. firms, impersonate a 
GSM base station to intercept mobile phone calls, or siphon data from a 
wireless network.

Hackers in the Tailored Access Operations division get the “ungettable” 
data the NSA can’t otherwise obtain from tapping undersea cables or 
collecting bulk data from companies like Yahoo and Google. They do this by 
by installing backdoors and other implants remotely or by physically 
intercepting hardware being delivered to customers and planting backdoors 
in firmware, der Spiegel reports, citing newly disclosed documents from 
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

“For nearly every lock, ANT seems to have a key in its toolbox,” der 
Spiegel writes. “And no matter what walls companies erect, the NSA’s 
specialists seem already to have gotten past them.”

With names like PICASSO, IRATEMONKEY, COTTONMOUTH, and WATERWITCH, the 
various tools allow NSA snoops to map networks and not only monitor data 
but surreptitiously divert it or modify it.

[...]

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