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NSA intercepts computer deliveries
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/report-nsa-intercepts-computer-deliveriesReport: NSA intercepts computer deliveries
Dec. 29, 2013 11:02 AM EST
LONDON (AP) — A German magazine has lifted the lid on the operations of the National Security Agency's hacker unit, revealing how American spies intercepted computer deliveries, exploited hardware vulnerabilities, and even hijacked Microsoft's bug report system to spy on their targets.
Der Spiegel's revelations relate to a division of the NSA known as Tailored Access Operations, or TAO, which is painted as an elite team of hackers specializing in stealing data from the toughest of targets.
Citing internal NSA documents, the magazine said Sunday that TAO's mission was "Getting the ungettable," and quoted an official as saying that TAO had won "some of the most significant intelligence our country has ever seen."
Der Spiegel has published a series of NSA stories based on documents leaked by former intelligence worker Edward Snowden.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-nsa-uses-powerful-toolbox-in-effort-to-spy-on-global-networks-a-940969.html
Inside TAO: Documents Reveal Top NSA Hacking Unit
By SPIEGEL Staff
In January 2010, numerous homeowners in San Antonio, Texas, stood baffled in front of their closed garage doors. They wanted to drive to work or head off to do their grocery shopping, but their garage door openers had gone dead, leaving them stranded. No matter how many times they pressed the buttons, the doors didn't budge. The problem primarily affected residents in the western part of the city, around Military Drive and the interstate highway known as Loop 410.
It was thanks to the garage door opener episode that Texans learned just how far the NSA's work had encroached upon their daily lives. For quite some time now, the intelligence agency has maintained a branch with around 2,000 employees at Lackland Air Force Base, also in San Antonio. In 2005, the agency took over a former Sony computer chip plant in the western part of the city. A brisk pace of construction commenced inside this enormous compound. The acquisition of the former chip factory at Sony Place was part of a massive expansion the agency began after the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
One of the two main buildings at the former plant has since housed a sophisticated NSA unit, one that has benefited the most from this expansion and has grown the fastest in recent years -- the Office of Tailored Access Operations, or TAO. This is the NSA's top operative unit -- something like a squad of plumbers that can be called in when normal access to a target is blocked.
According to internal NSA documents viewed by SPIEGEL, these on-call digital plumbers are involved in many sensitive operations conducted by American intelligence agencies. TAO's area of operations ranges from counterterrorism to cyber attacks to traditional espionage. The documents reveal just how diversified the tools at TAO's disposal have become -- and also how it exploits the technical weaknesses of the IT industry, from Microsoft to Cisco and Huawei, to carry out its discreet and efficient attacks.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors-for-numerous-devices-a-940994.html
Shopping for Spy Gear: Catalog Advertises NSA Toolbox
By Jacob Appelbaum, Judith Horchert and Christian Stöcker
When it comes to modern firewalls for corporate computer networks, the world's second largest network equipment manufacturer doesn't skimp on praising its own work. According to Juniper Networks' online PR copy, the company's products are "ideal" for protecting large companies and computing centers from unwanted access from outside. They claim the performance of the company's special computers is "unmatched" and their firewalls are the "best-in-class." Despite these assurances, though, there is one attacker none of these products can fend off -- the United States' National Security Agency.
Specialists at the intelligence organization succeeded years ago in penetrating the company's digital firewalls. A document viewed by SPIEGEL resembling a product catalog reveals that an NSA division called ANT has burrowed its way into nearly all the security architecture made by the major players in the industry -- including American global market leader Cisco and its Chinese competitor Huawei, but also producers of mass-market goods, such as US computer-maker Dell.
These NSA agents, who specialize in secret back doors, are able to keep an eye on all levels of our digital lives -- from computing centers to individual computers, from laptops to mobile phones. For nearly every lock, ANT seems to have a key in its toolbox. And no matter what walls companies erect, the NSA's specialists seem already to have gotten past them.
This, at least, is the impression gained from flipping through the 50-page document. The list reads like a mail-order catalog, one from which other NSA employees can order technologies from the ANT division for tapping their targets' data. The catalog even lists the prices for these electronic break-in tools, with costs ranging from free to $250,000.
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I mean, that's what the NSA said they were doing, right? They wouldn't lie to us, would they??
And I know they need it. 
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http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/NSA-plant-in-San-Antonio-shrouded-in-secrecy-4604109.php
NSA plant in San Antonio shrouded in secrecy
By Nolan Hicks | June 16, 2013
SAN ANTONIO - Over the past six years, the National Security Agency has quietly transformed the former Sony chip fabrication plant on the northwest side into a black-box hub of intelligence gathering and data storage.
Satellite and aerial imagery show that massive air conditioning units and backup generators have been added to the facility, which is now ringed by barbed-wire fencing. City permits and property tax records show that the complex has been dramatically expanded.
But details of the project have been shielded by a level of secrecy that is uncommon even for the NSA, an agency the U.S. government refused to officially acknowledge for decades, earning it the moniker "No Such Agency."
NSA plant in San Antonio shrouded in secrecy
By Nolan Hicks | June 16, 2013
SAN ANTONIO - Over the past six years, the National Security Agency has quietly transformed the former Sony chip fabrication plant on the northwest side into a black-box hub of intelligence gathering and data storage.
Satellite and aerial imagery show that massive air conditioning units and backup generators have been added to the facility, which is now ringed by barbed-wire fencing. City permits and property tax records show that the complex has been dramatically expanded.
But details of the project have been shielded by a level of secrecy that is uncommon even for the NSA, an agency the U.S. government refused to officially acknowledge for decades, earning it the moniker "No Such Agency."
