Technology
Glenn Greenwald: how the NSA tampers with US-made internet routers
The NSA has been covertly implanting interception tools in US servers heading overseas – even though the US government has warned against using Chinese technology for the same reasons, says Glenn Greenwald, in an extract from his new book about the Snowden affair, No Place to Hide
• The explosive day we revealed Edward Snowden's identity
• The state targets dissenters not just 'bad guys'
• Glenn Greenwald: 'I don't trust the UK not to arrest me'
For years, the US government loudly warned the world that Chinese routers and other internet devices pose a "threat" because they are built with backdoor surveillance functionality that gives the Chinese government the ability to spy on anyone using them. Yet what the NSA's documents show is that Americans have been engaged in precisely the activity that the US accused the Chinese of doing.
The drumbeat of American accusations against Chinese internet device manufacturers was unrelenting. In 2012, for example, a report from the House Intelligence Committee, headed by Mike Rogers, claimed that Huawei and ZTE, the top two Chinese telecommunications equipment companies, "may be violating United States laws" and have "not followed United States legal obligations or international standards of business behaviour". The committee recommended that "the United States should view with suspicion the continued penetration of the US telecommunications market by Chinese telecommunications companies".
NSA and GCHQ target Tor network that protects anonymity of web users
• Top-secret documents detail repeated efforts to crack Tor
• US-funded tool relied upon by dissidents and activists
• Core security of network remains intact but NSA has some success attacking users' computers
• Bruce Schneier: the NSA's attacks must be made public
• Attacking Tor: the technical details
• 'Peeling back the layers with Egotistical Giraffe' – document
• 'Tor Stinks' presentation – full document
• Tor: 'The king of high-secure, low-latency anonymity'
The National Security Agency has made repeated attempts to develop attacks against people using Tor, a popular tool designed to protect online anonymity, despite the fact the software is primarily funded and promoted by the US government itself.
Top-secret NSA documents, disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, reveal that the agency's current successes against Tor rely on identifying users and then attacking vulnerable software on their computers. One technique developed by the agency targeted the Firefox web browser used with Tor, giving the agency full control over targets' computers, including access to files, all keystrokes and all online activity.