NSA的秘密武器：通过无线电获取信息

choi

David E Sanger and Thom Shanker, NSA的秘密武器：通过无线电获取信息. 纽约时报中文网, Jan 15, 2014
cn.nytimes.com/world/20140115/c15nsa/


, which is translated from

David E Sanger and Thom Shanker, NSA Devises Radio Pathway Into Computers. New York Times, Jan 15, 2014 (front-page top article).
www.nytimes.com/2014/01/15/us/ns ... ed-to-internet.html

Quote:

(a) "While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer experts and American officials.

"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. In some cases, they are sent to a briefcase-size relay station that intelligence agencies can set up miles away from the target.

(b) "In most cases, the radio frequency hardware must be physically inserted by a spy, a manufacturer or an unwitting user.

"The NSA calls its efforts more an act of 'active defense' against foreign cyberattacks than a tool to go on the offensive. But when Chinese attackers place similar software on the computer systems of American companies or government agencies, American officials have protested, often at the presidential level.

"Among the most frequent targets of the NSA and its Pentagon partner, United States Cyber Command, have been units of the Chinese Army, which the United States has accused of launching regular digital probes and attacks on American industrial and military targets, usually to steal secrets or intellectual property. But the program, code-named Quantum, has also been successful in inserting software into Russian military networks and systems used by the Mexican police and drug cartels, trade institutions inside the European Union, and sometime partners against terrorism like Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan, according to officials and an NSA map that indicates sites of what the agency calls 'computer network exploitation.'


My comment: The English original (in print and online)--but NOT the Chinese online translation--carries a graphic, making it much easier to understand the text. Please view the graphic first, before reading the text.