Cover of September 2014 "Wired" magazine, featuring Edward Snowden, photographed by Platon.(Photo: Platon/Wired)

Development of a U.S. counterattack for cyberterrorism that could do more harm than good was one of the final events that drove Edward Snowden to leak government secrets, the former National Security Agency contractor tells Wired magazine.

Snowden, photographed for the story clutching an American flag, said the MonsterMind program was designed to detect a foreign cyberattack and keep it from entering the country. But it also would automatically fire back. The problem, he said, is malware can be routed through an innocent third-party country.

"These attacks can be spoofed," he told Wired. "You could have someone sitting in China, for example, making it appear that one of these attacks is originating in Russia. And then we end up shooting back at a Russian hospital. What happens next?"

Snowden, 31, also told the magazine he hopes to return to the U.S. someday.

"I told the government I'd volunteer for prison, as long as it served the right purpose," he said. "I care more about the country than what happens to me. But we can't allow the law to become a political weapon or agree to scare people away from standing up for their rights, no matter how good the deal. I'm not going to be part of that."

Snowden was a contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton when he leaked details of U.S. surveillance programs to The Guardian and The Washington Post. The first reports were published in June 2013, setting off an immediate global firestorm. Snowden, who was in hiding in Hong Kong at the time, fled to Moscow where he still lives.

His impact had staying power.

President Obama promised to scale back surveillance of American citizens. Germany ordered the CIA station chief out of the country. The Guardian and Post won the Pulitzer prize for public service for their coverage.

Snowden previously expressed interest in returning to the United States, but said he feared an unjust trial on charges of espionage and theft of government property could result in a lengthy prison sentence. He remains adamant that what he did was for the good of the country.

Read the original:
Embracing flag, Snowden says he hopes to return to U.S.

The sun sets late here in June, and outside the hotel window long shadows are beginning to envelop the city. But Snowden doesnt seem to mind that the interview is stretching into the evening hours. He is living on New York time, the better to communicate with his stateside supporters and stay on top of the American news cycle. Often, that means hearing in almost real time the harsh assessments of his critics. Indeed, its not only government apparatchiks that take issue with what Snowden did nextmoving from disaffected operative to whistle-blowing dissident. Even in the technology industry, where he has many supporters, some accuse him of playing too fast and loose with dangerous information. Netscape founder and prominent venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has told CNBC, If you looked up in the encyclopedia traitor, theres a picture of Edward Snowden. Bill Gates delivered a similarly cutting assessment in a Rolling Stone interview. I think he broke the law, so I certainly wouldnt characterize him as a hero, he said. You wont find much admiration from me.

Snowden with General Michael Hayden at a gala in 2011. Hayden, former director of the NSA and CIA, defended US surveillance policies in the wake of Snowdens revelations.

Snowden adjusts his glasses; one of the nose pads is missing, making them slip occasionally. He seems lost in thought, looking back to the moment of decision, the point of no return. The time when, thumb drive in hand, aware of the enormous potential consequences, he secretly went to work. If the government will not represent our interests, he says, his face serious, his words slow, then the public will champion its own interests. And whistle-blowing provides a traditional means to do so.

The NSA had apparently never predicted that someone like Snowden might go rogue. In any case, Snowden says he had no problem accessing, downloading, and extracting all the confidential information he liked. Except for the very highest level of classified documents, details about virtually all of the NSAs surveillance programs were accessible to anyone, employee or contractor, private or general, who had top-secret NSA clearance and access to an NSA computer.

But Snowdens access while in Hawaii went well beyond even this. I was the top technologist for the information-sharing office in Hawaii, he says. I had access to everything.

Well, almost everything. There was one key area that remained out of his reach: the NSAs aggressive cyberwarfare activity around the world. To get access to that last cache of secrets, Snowden landed a job as an infrastructure analyst with another giant NSA contractor, Booz Allen. The role gave him rare dual-hat authority covering both domestic and foreign intercept capabilitiesallowing him to trace domestic cyberattacks back to their country of origin. In his new job, Snowden became immersed in the highly secret world of planting malware into systems around the world and stealing gigabytes of foreign secrets. At the same time, he was also able to confirm, he says, that vast amounts of US communications were being intercepted and stored without a warrant, without any requirement for criminal suspicion, probable cause, or individual designation. He gathered that evidence and secreted it safely away.

By the time he went to work for Booz Allen in the spring of 2013, Snowden was thoroughly disillusioned, yet he had not lost his capacity for shock. One day an intelligence officer told him that TAOa division of NSA hackershad attempted in 2012 to remotely install an exploit in one of the core routers at a major Internet service provider in Syria, which was in the midst of a prolonged civil war. This would have given the NSA access to email and other Internet traffic from much of the country. But something went wrong, and the router was bricked insteadrendered totally inoperable. The failure of this router caused Syria to suddenly lose all connection to the Internetalthough the public didnt know that the US government was responsible. (This is the first time the claim has been revealed.)

Inside the TAO operations center, the panicked government hackers had what Snowden calls an oh shit moment. They raced to remotely repair the router, desperate to cover their tracks and prevent the Syrians from discovering the sophisticated infiltration software used to access the network. But because the router was bricked, they were powerless to fix the problem.

Fortunately for the NSA, the Syrians were apparently more focused on restoring the nations Internet than on tracking down the cause of the outage. Back at TAOs operations center, the tension was broken with a joke that contained more than a little truth: If we get caught, we can always point the finger at Israel.

Want more WIRED? Subscribe now to get 6 months for $5

Go here to read the rest:
Edward Snowden: The Untold Story | Threat Level | WIRED

Fugitive secret-leaker Edward Snowden said hed gladly volunteer to go to prison, if it meant he could return home to the U.S., according to a bombshell interview with the runaway former NSA contractor published Wednesday.

I told the government Id volunteer for prison, as long as it served the right purpose, Snowdentold WIRED magazine in an exclusive interviewfrom Moscow. I care more about the country than what happens to me.

But we cant allow the law to become a political weapon or agree to scare people away from standing up for their rights, no matter how good the deal, he said. Im not going to be part of that.

The remarks, part of far-reaching article titledThe Most Wanted Man in the World,are some of the most extensive yet made by Snowden since he fled to Russia in 2013 seeking refuge from American prosecution.

The 31-year-old North Carolina native also warned WIRED which will feature a provocative cover photo of Snowden clutching an American flag on its upcoming issue that the NSA remains plagued with flaws and is still unprepared to securely handle the sensitive personal information it allegedly uncovers on millions of U.S. citizens.

They still havent fixed their problems, Snowden said of his former employer. They still have negligent auditing, they still have things going for a walk, and they have no idea where theyre coming from and they have no idea where theyre going.

If thats the case, how can we as the public trust the NSA with all of our information, with all of our private records, the permanent record of our lives, he said, before revealing another eye-opening covert government surveillance program, called MonsterMind.

MonsterMind, Snowden explained, is a secret NSA scheme that has the capability to detect incoming cyberattacks and the ability to counterattack with no human intervention at all,WIRED writer James Bamford explained.

But Snowden warned that such a program could result in a huge unintended international incident, because many of such attacks are orchestrated by sinister hackers to come from computers in third-party countries that arent even aware of the attack.

These attacks can be spoofed, he said. You could have someone sitting in China, for example, making it appear that one of these attacks is originating in Russia. And then we end up shooting back at a Russian hospital. What happens next?

Read more here:
Edward Snowden says he would ‘volunteer’ for prison ...

Fugitive whistle-blower Edward Snowden said in a magazine interview published Wednesday that he is sure his former employers at the National Security Agency are tracking his communications while in exile in Russia.

In a lengthy interview with Wired magazine, the 31-year-old former NSA contractor wanted on U.S. charges of theft and espionage also said he would gladly return home and face prison for his disclosures on massive private data collection if that would serve to end what he sees as the U.S. intelligence agencies' surveillance abuses.

"I told the government Id volunteer for prison, as long as it served the right purpose, Snowden told the Wired article's writer, James Bamford, during a series of interviews at an undisclosed hotel in Moscow. "I care more about the country than what happens to me. But we cant allow the law to become a political weapon or agree to scare people away from standing up for their rights, no matter how good the deal. Im not going to be part of that.

During the interviews conducted in late spring, Snowden said he deliberately left a trail of "digital bread crumbs" so the NSA would know which secret documents and data files he had taken with him when he fled his contractor job in Hawaii 14 months ago.

He told Wired that the agency's report that he took 1.7 million files with him suggested they had missed the clues he left so NSA officials could take whatever steps were necessary to protect sources and revise operational practices.

"I figured they would have a hard time, Snowden said of his evidence trail. "I didnt figure they would be completely incapable.

Snowden told Bamford that the final straw for him was the NSA's MonsterMind operation, a malware-detecting program that can retaliate against the source of infection without any human involvement in the decision. The source of cyber attacks can be disguised, he noted, opening the possibility of striking back at an innocent target and provoking confrontation.

Fellow intelligence agency employees had become inured to the wide-scale intrusions on private communication by the agency, Snowden said, a jaded indifference he didn't want to acquire.

"Its like the boiling frog," Snowden told the magazine. "You get exposed to a little bit of evil, a little bit of rule-breaking, a little bit of dishonesty, a little bit of deceptiveness, a little bit of disservice to the public interest, and you can brush it off, you can come to justify it. But if you do that, it creates a slippery slope that just increases over time, and by the time youve been in 15 years, 20 years, 25 years, youve seen it all and it doesnt shock you."

Snowden said he left when he did and disclosed the surveillance excesses "before he too was boiled alive," Bamford wrote.

See original here:
Snowden says he left clues about data he stole but NSA missed them