Category Archives: NSA

The National Security Agency is amping up its game when it comes to challenging young, college-age students in military academies on their cyber skills.

The agency is hosting its 17th annual Cyber Defense Exercise (CDX), but with a few new twists.

The exercise challenges students at the U.S. Military, Naval, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine academies, as well as undergraduate and graduate students from the Royal Military College of Canada.

Their mission is to defend networks they have created from a red team comprised of U.S., Canadian and industry cyber warriors.

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Along with defending the network, the teams have certain challenges they need to secure as well.

What this does is challenges them to look into forensics and see where malware lies and where things happen, said James Titcomb technical lead for CDX said April 12.

The challenges consist of reverse engineering and malware analysis, network forensics, offensive ethical hacking and control of a simulated drone.

The graduate students are testing two new challenges that involve securing a space satellite and an unmanned ground vehicle.

This year whats new is we have two cadets from the Air Force academy participating in the red team, said Shirley McMonigle, CDX program lead. This is also the first year the undergraduates will participate in the drone challenge.

This year teams will have to deal with ransomeware as well. The teams can either pay points to get out of the hack or try to fix it.

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Teams are scored on network confidentiality, usability, integrity and on the challenges.

NSA uses a red team to interfere with students networks and their ability to complete the challenges. Much of the intrusions find their way into the students networks through a gray team, which acts as a network user.

The gray team may fall for social engineering tactics.

Most of our access is done through the gray cell. We call it the user that clicks on everything. What we do is we purposely throw things and have the gray cell open those links so that we can own their work stations. [The teams] have to go in and mitigate that, Titcomb said.

The red teams are a way for those in the military to keep their skills sharp too.

Air Reservist Lt. Tim Li said he works in cybersecurity for J.P. Morgan. He said acting as a hacker helps him understand the other side of the cybersecurity coin.

Its fun, its the opposite for me of what I do on the outside. Its learning what the attacker would do, so it will definitely be beneficial for me once I return to my civilian job, Li said.

The students embedded this year with the red team said they were taking in a lot from the experience.

Nick Co, a 22-year-old midshipman, said he could see himself working for U.S. Cyber Command or the NSA at some point in the future.

Thats good news for the military, which is strapped for people with cyber talent in the service.

I think for us some of it is trying to understand the basics first. We are still hugely learning, but we know that the field is really growing and we definitely know they could use some officers out there, Co said. These guys are the real professionals so its fun to really learn from them and take this back and hopefully when we graduate implement this.

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NSA gives military students a leg up on cyber with real-time exercise ... - FederalNewsRadio.com

Donald Trump and his team have been having difficulties adapting to the White House. (SAUL LOEB/AFP)

Former National Security Agency analyst John Schindler has become well known for his commentary about ties between the Russian government and members of the Trump administration, and this week he pounced on revelations that Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page was under surveillance by the FBI for allegedly being a foreign agent of the Russian government.

Reacting to news that the FBI took out a FISA warrant on Page, Schindler called Page a slimy little traitor who was a fully witting agent of Russian intelligence agencies.

He then drew a broader connection to the rest of the White House by saying that several members of the administration were similarly compromised by ties to the Russian government.

George Washington was all about counterintelligence, he said. He would have had at least half the Trump WH shot as traitors, without tears or doubts.

Schindler, a political conservative who has in the past also expressed disdain for the Obama administration, also encouraged more Republicans to embrace zero tolerance for lies and corruption especially involving foreign spies.

Read the whole tweet storm below.

All the while Page was a fully witting agent of the SVR.

Fuck this slimy little traitor.https://t.co/MJD1QjUct7

John Schindler (@20committee) April 12, 2017

Reject ideology. Embrace zero-tolerance 4 lies+corruption esp involving foreign spies. That'll make Washington smile & save our Republic.

John Schindler (@20committee) April 12, 2017

George Washington was all about counterintelligence. He would have had at least half the Trump WH shot as traitors, without tears or doubts.

John Schindler (@20committee) April 12, 2017

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Ex-NSA analyst: George Washington 'would have had at least half ... - Raw Story

April 12, 2017

Agencies felt databases would provide up-to-the-minute information at the fingertips of analysts, technical personnel, and executives.

Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is the least famous, least exciting, and most prevalent form of intelligence, covering any sources that are theoretically open to anyone, such as newspaper articles, published books, or social media posts. With the ubiquity of the internet, the use of such commercial databases is beyond routine for both the Intelligence Community and the government at large, but there was a time, however, where the mere interest was not only cutting edge, but problematic.

By June 1985, the NSA had been looking at the issue and decided to reach out to CIA about it. The NSA memo, originally marked For Official Use Only, was sent from the NSA Director directly to the CIA Director, proposed that they work with the Intelligence Handling Committee to find a way to exploit open-source, commercial databases. Unsurprisingly, NSA volunteered to take the lead in exploring the issue. To the NSA, the benefits were obvious. The savings in time and manpower have long been recognized. They could give up-to-the-minute information at the fingertips of analysts, technical personnel, and executives.

Given this, it was only natural that the NSA would want to use this open-source information by integrating commercial database-derived information into a variety of internal support programs.

The NSA saw several obstacles, including costs and security. Significantly, in addition to accessing the information, they would have to devise ways to integrate it, and allow users to assimilate the information before they would be able to successfully exploit it. These challenges wouldnt be unique to any of the agencies in the Intelligence Community, or even the rest of the government, which led the NSA to conclude that no one agency should have to deal with these issues alone.

Security would be the major issue, as it included not only the still-emerging issues of cybersecurity, but also deniability. How could the NSA and other agencies access these databases without giving away their interests? NSAs Information Resources Management Organization had begun looking into alternatives for rapid secure access to commercial databases, including data downloading, transmission through a secure gateway computer or physical data transfers.

For its part, CIA agreed and was already working on some integrating some commercial databases into its work. The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) was charged with collecting information from foreign public media, which the Agency felt included accessing foreign commercial databases. According to a formerly SECRET memo prepared for the CIA Director, the project had first begun in 1984.

The pilot project was fairly ambitious, especially for the time. Not only did it allow the Agency to collect information more quickly, the pilot project proved that the Agency could collect new bibliographic and documentary information [that was] not normally available through regular means of acquisition. By sampling some 50 online databases contained in the French Telesystemes-QUESTEL network, the project had found scientific, technical and economic information that met FBIS requirements.

FOIA requests have been filed to learn more about these efforts from the NSA and CIA.

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CIA and NSA first sought to exploit commercial databases in mid-80s - MuckRock

The US National Security Agency (NSA) has been spying on Pakistans mobile networks, whistleblowing organisation WikiLeaks has tweeted. Hundreds of NSA cyber weapons variants publicly released including code showing hacking of Pakistan mobile system, @wikileaks tweeted.

According to a report in Express Tribune on Monday, the hacker group Shadow Brokers released a new cache of information detailing how the NSA accessed private and public networks in other countries. A researcher on Twitter who identifies himself as x0rz decrypted the files and uploaded them on Github, a web-based repository and internet hosting service.

The researcher confirmed that the archives include evidence of NSA operators access inside the GSM network of Mobilink one of the Pakistans most popular mobile services provider, the report noted. The hacker group had previously released data suggesting the US agency may have been monitoring hundreds of IP addresses in Pakistan. The encrypted files were being decrypted by security researchers around the world.

Shadow Brokers had initially wanted to auction its data cache in exchange for Bitcoin but as no buyer turned up, they released the data online. This is not the first time that reports have surfaced claiming that the US NSA is snooping on other countries. According to a Daily Mail report in 2014, WikiLeaks disclosed documents that suggested the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was among six political parties from around the world the NSA was authorised to conduct surveillance on for gathering foreign intelligence. The authorisation was given by a secret American court, it said.

The leak was planned months ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to the US, the report claimed. Another report in the Washington Post that also came in 2014 said the US has long had broad no-spying arrangements with four countries Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in a group known collectively as the Five Eyes.

But a classified 2010 legal certification approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and included among a set of documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden lists 193 countries [including India], that would be of valid interest for US intelligence, the Post said.

Publish date: April 12, 2017 11:45 am| Modified date: April 12, 2017 11:41 am

Tags: Github, Mobile networks, National Security Agency, NSA, Pakistan, Shadow Brokers, spying, Surveillance, United States, WikiLeaks

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WikiLeaks reveals that NSA has been spying on Pakistan's mobile networks - Tech2 (blog)

Ars Technica

Mysterious group posts more alleged NSA hacking tools; Russia link suspected News & Observer One document appeared to show that NSA spyware had been placed on servers in South Korea, Russia, Japan, China, Mexico, Taiwan, Spain, Venezuela and Thailand, among other countries. The dump included details of how the NSA purportedly had ... In slap at Trump, Shadow Brokers release NSA EquationGroup filesArs Technica 'NSA malware' released by Shadow Brokers hacker groupBBC News Shadow Brokers slam Trump, expose additional NSA cyber toolsSC Magazine Forbes -TechCrunch -InfoWorld -Medium all 55 news articles »

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Mysterious group posts more alleged NSA hacking tools; Russia link suspected - News & Observer

An ex-CIA associate director and a former head of the National Security Agency will be making appearances at Furman University.(Photo: FILE/Staff)Buy Photo

An ex-CIA associate director and a former head of the National Security Agency will be making appearancesat Furman University during a two-day symposium on national security and civil liberties.

The symposium, "Safe and Free? Civil Liberties and the Fight for National Security," is free and open to the public.

It starts at 7 p.m. Monday with Lt. Gen. John Mulholland (U.S. Army, ret.), a former commander of special forces and CIA associate director for military affairs, who will speak on Americas Current and Future National Security Challenges.

Following his talk, commander of U.S. Army Intelligence Maj. Gen. Chris Ballard, Jen Lambert of the State Department, and biotechnology scientist Sheana Cavitt will discuss how we address national security challenges in an increasingly complex world.

At 7 p.m. Tuesday,Adm. Mike McConnell (U.S. Navy, ret.), former U.S. Director of National Intelligence and former head of the National Security Agency will present the case for government surveillance.

Weighing in on the balance between providing national security and protecting civil liberties are Maurice Owens, who coordinated the White House situation room and is now an executive with Libra Group; Eli Dourado, a technology policy and cybersecurity expert; former CIA officer Mike Roosevelt; and National Public Radio's lead digital reporter Jessica Taylor.

Historian and 10th Furman president David Shi will moderate both sessions.

All 10 speakers Furman University graduates.

The symposium is presented by the Riley Institute and the university's Department of Politics and International Affairs.

For more information about the symposium, contact the Riley Institute at 864-294-3546 or visit this link.

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Former NSA head to talk about government surveillance - Greenville News

The University of West Florida has been named by the National Security Agency as the National Center Academic of Excellence Cybersecurity Regional Resource Center for the Southeastern region. In this role, the UWF Center for Cybersecurity will provide leadership to advance cyber defense education among colleges and universities in the region and support new and existing CAE institutions.

UWF will serve as the CAE Regional Resource Center for all institutions of higher education in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Puerto Rico. The University will receive a nearly $200,000 grant and will work with the NSA CAE Program Office and other regional and national hubs across the country to enhance cybersecurity education and expand the CAE Program across the nation.

This prestigious designation recognizes the excellent and innovative programs offered by the UWF Center for Cybersecurity, UWF President Martha D. Saunders said. Our selection as a regional resource center recognizes the leadership role that Dr. Eman El-Sheikh and her team have taken in this vital area. UWF has developed a number of partnerships with key players in the field of cybersecurity that prepare our students for successful careers.

The CAE-Cyber Defense Program Office named six CAE institutions as CAE Regional Resource Centers, as well as four CAE National Resource Centers and four CAE Consultation Resource Centers across the nation.

In May 2016, the NSA and the Department of Homeland Security designated UWF as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education. The National Centers of Academic Excellence program seeks to reduce vulnerability in the nations information infrastructure by promoting higher education and research in cyber defense and increasing the number of professionals with cyber defense expertise.

We are honored to serve as the CAE Regional Resource Center for the Southeast, said Dr. Eman El-Sheikh, UWF Center for Cybersecurity director. Building on our successes and partnerships, UWF will lead efforts to advanced cybersecurity education and expand the cybersecurity workforce. We will work to increase the number of CAE designated institutions in the Southeast and also provide support and resources to existing CAE institutions.

This will include cybersecurity program development support, faculty professional development activities, and enhancing research and education collaborations among Southeast institutions. Our mission is highly rewarding: build a strong cybersecurity community to advance education, workforce development and innovation in the Southeast and nationally.

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NSA Names UWF As Regional Cybersecurity Resource Center - NorthEscambia.com

WANE

Hacker group releases password to alleged NSA files WANE NEW YORK (AP) A secretive group that published a trove of hacking tools allegedly used by U.S. spies has released a password that it says can unlock related files. In a Medium post , the Shadow Brokers group revealed a password to files associated ... and more »

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Hacker group releases password to alleged NSA files - WANE

US national security advisor HR McMaster will be in India this weekend to discuss stabilisation of Afghanistan in the wake of threats posed by a resurgent Taliban and the expanding footprint of the Islamic State in provinces bordering Pakistan.

Gen (retd) McMaster will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, foreign minister Sushma Swaraj and foreign secretary S Jaishankar in addition to his counterpart Ajit Doval in what will be his first visit to South Asia since he took over in February. McMaster is expected to carry an invitation from US President Donald Trump for Modi to visit Washington in June.

McMaster will visit Kabul and Islamabad before he lands in New Delhi for a day to discuss Afghanistan and renewal of India-US defence ties, top government sources confirmed to HT.

South Block officials say the US is concerned over a newly formed Russia-China-Pakistan-Iran axis to promote the Taliban with fresh weapons supplies and strategic support for a future political role in Afghanistan. The axis is said to be supporting the Taliban with the justification that it is the only force that could take on the Islamic State.

The US is concerned as 9,000 of its troops are on Afghan soil as part of the larger stabilisation effort with New Delhi helping in infrastructure development under the Asharf Ghani-led government. NSA McMaster, who was the key figure behind the US strike in Syria, will be in the region to assess the American role in Afghanistan and whether more troops are required in the near future, a senior official said.

While McMaster, who has served in Iraq and Afghanistan, will also discuss the expanding Chinese footprint in the Af-Pak region, Islamabad watchers suspect that Pakistans award of the death sentence to alleged spy Kulbhushan Jadhav was meant to provoke India and create tension on the eve of the US NSAs visit.

The visit will revisit India-US defence ties, with the bilateral defence technology and trade initiative (DTTI) not having taken off so far. The DTTI was launched by the previous UPA government with the Barack Obama administration. All projects under it such as the Javelin shoulder-fired missile, C-130 J roll-on roll-off, small UAV pathfinder and even a working group on hot engine technology are still in nascent stages of development. During McMasters visit, it is expected that both countries will identify new products under the Make in India programme.

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American NSA to discuss Afghanistan, Pakistan on maiden India visit - Hindustan Times

Cybersecurity startup Synack has secured $21 million from Microsoft, HPE and Singtel to expand its presence in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region.

Synack, founded by two former NSA analysts, is looking to expand its crowd-sourced bug hunting platform in the APAC region on the back of $21.25 million it just raised in a series C round led by Microsoft Ventures, and joined by HPE and Singtels venture arm, Singtel Innov8.

Synack launched in 2013 to help organizations find and close new bugs in web sites by offering cash incentives to its closed network of whitehat hackers. The Synack Red Team offers a private, managed crowdsourced security testing service to organizations. The system differs from Googles vulnerability rewards programs, which permit anyone from the public to report vulnerabilities in its software.

The new round brings Synacks total raised to over $55m from backers that include GV, the venture arm of Google parent, Alphabet.

Synack said APAC has been clamoring for new cybersecurity innovation and will be entering the region to meet that demand.

The company says local hackers and businesses will see more attention from the company as a result of the funds.

"Australia is definitely a market of interest to Synack," said to Synack CEO and co-founder Jay Kaplan in an email to CSO Australia.

"We already have a number of Australian companies reaching out to us and we will pursue those. We also have a number of Australian hackers on the Synack Red Team. We attended Ruxcon for the last couple of years and will continue to recruit hackers, and customers, in Australia."

Synack's chief R&D officer Patrick Wardle, who specializes in Apple Mac hacking, spoke at the Melbourne Ruxcon conference in 2016 about reverse engineering Apple's desktop kernel and I/O kit drivers.

The company is also looking grow its network of hackers in Europe to meet an expected uptick in demand from organizations racing to comply with the EUs General Data Protection Regulation deadlines, which comes into effect in May 2018.

The security company says it allows customers to take an offensive approach to security.

The best defense is a good offense. Businesses can only stay one step ahead of the adversary by beating them at their own game, said Kaplan.

Bringing Microsoft Ventures, HPE and Singtel Innov8 on board highlights their ongoing investment in security for their products and customers. We have a shared vision for the future of cybersecurity and see a huge opportunity for alignment in platform development and scaling channels to market.

The US Department of Defense recently awarded the security firm and fellow third-party bounty service provider, HackerOne, a deal to run a contract system to allow different parts of DoD to launch their own bug bounty challenges.

This followed the completion of the DoDs Hack the Pentagon pilot bounty, which tested new ways the agency could contract for services. The pilot attracted 1,400 hackers and resulted in 138 previously undisclosed or zero-day flaws being discovered.

Venture capitalists have poured tens of millions of dollars into bug bounty service providers over the past year, eyeing growth in demand for third-party cybersecurity testing services as competition for cybersecurity skills heats up among traditional businesses that are building online assets.

HackerOne raised US$40 million in Series C in February, and Sydney-founded Bugcrowd raised US$15 million in Series B last April. HackerOne on Monday announced plans to new offices in Germany and the UK, and plans to boost its engineering team in the Netherlands.

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Ex-NSA bug bounty startup Synack lands $21m, eyes Australia for growth - CSO Australia