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| Snowden Used Low Cost Web Crawler to Scrape Data From Systems |
| 2014-02-10 |
| WASHINGTON — Intelligence officials investigating how Edward J. Snowden gained access to a huge trove of the country’s most highly classified documents say they have determined that he used inexpensive and widely available software to “scrape” the National Security Agency’s networks, and kept at it even after he was briefly challenged by agency officials. Using “web crawler” software designed to search, index and back up a website, Mr. Snowden “scraped data out of our systems” while he went about his day job, according to a senior intelligence official. “We do not believe this was an individual sitting at a machine and downloading this much material in sequence,” the official said. The process, he added, was “quite automated.” The findings are striking because the N.S.A.’s mission includes protecting the nation’s most sensitive military and intelligence computer systems from cyberattacks, especially the sophisticated attacks that emanate from Russia and China. Mr. Snowden’s “insider attack,” by contrast, was hardly sophisticated and should have been easily detected, investigators found. |
| Posted by:Omavising Ebbemp9815 |
| #7 Wait till they discover he's still queuing searches. Nerdy Snark of the Day! |
| Posted by: SteveS 2014-02-10 21:15 |
| #6 Wait till they discover he's still queuing searches. How do you think Vlad got the tape of Vicki? |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2014-02-10 14:38 |
| #5 "We assume what he touched, he took. Assyume, Make'a ass of youme. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2014-02-10 13:28 |
| #4 Wait till they discover he's still queuing searches. LOL - I wouldn't be suprised - and emailing the results to him... "What are these batches of 5Mb emails being sent to some rsnowden@google.ru on a nightly basis for?". |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2014-02-10 12:49 |
| #3 Any bit-head worth his salt knows that the changes users think are hard are easy and vice versa. It seems that the people writing the policies and procedures are users....or politicians. BP has it exactly correct, to paraphrase the Blog faterh its amateurs all the way down. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2014-02-10 07:48 |
| #2 wow, real amateur night at the NSA. I thought he got the backup tapes, nothing even that complicated! |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2014-02-10 06:51 |
| #1 ..... and kept at it even after he was briefly challenged by agency officials. Wait till they discover he's still queuing searches. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2014-02-10 03:14 |