{"id":118926,"date":"2014-05-17T15:34:49","date_gmt":"2014-05-17T15:34:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=118926"},"modified":"2014-05-17T15:34:49","modified_gmt":"2014-05-17T15:34:49","slug":"nsa-fbi-made-facebook-perfect-mass-surveillance-tool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/nsa-fbi-made-facebook-perfect-mass-surveillance-tool\/","title":{"rendered":"How the NSA &#038; FBI made Facebook the perfect mass surveillance tool"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong style=\"color: #000000;\">Harrison Weber<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">The National Security Agency and the FBI teamed up in October 2010 to develop techniques for turning Facebook into a surveillance tool.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">Documents\u00a0<a style=\"color: #0066cc;\" href=\"http:\/\/glenngreenwald.net\/#BookDocuments\" target=\"_blank\">released alongside<\/a>\u00a0security journalist Glenn Greenwald\u2019s new book, \u201cNo Place To Hide,\u201d reveal the NSA and FBI partnership, in which the two agencies developed techniques for exploiting Facebook chats, capturing private photos, collecting IP addresses, and gathering private profile data.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">According to the slides below, the agencies\u2019 goal for such collection was to capture \u201ca very rich source of information on targets,\u201d including \u201cpersonal details, \u2018pattern of life,\u2019 connections to associates, [and] media.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\"><a style=\"color: #0066cc;\" href=\"http:\/\/venturebeat.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/05\/screen-shot-2014-05-15-at-8-56-48-am.png\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"slb\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1473915 alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/venturebeat.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/05\/screen-shot-2014-05-15-at-8-56-48-am.png?w=558&amp;h=440\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2014-05-15 at 8.56.48 AM\" width=\"558\" height=\"440\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">NSA documents make painfully clear how the agencies collected information \u201cby exploiting inherent weaknesses in Facebook\u2019s security model\u201d through its use of the popular\u00a0<a style=\"color: #0066cc;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.akamai.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Akamai<\/a>\u00a0content delivery network. The NSA describes its methods as \u201cassumed authentication,\u201d and \u201csecurity through obscurity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\"><a style=\"color: #0066cc;\" href=\"http:\/\/venturebeat.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/05\/screen-shot-2014-05-15-at-8-57-21-am.png\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"slb\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1473917 alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/venturebeat.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/05\/screen-shot-2014-05-15-at-8-57-21-am.png?w=558&amp;h=429\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2014-05-15 at 8.57.21 AM\" width=\"558\" height=\"429\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">The slide below shows how the NSA and U.K. spy agency GCHQ also worked together to \u201cobtain profile and album images.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\"><a style=\"color: #0066cc;\" href=\"http:\/\/venturebeat.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/05\/screen-shot-2014-05-15-at-8-58-03-am1.png\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"slb\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1473913 alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/venturebeat.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/05\/screen-shot-2014-05-15-at-8-58-03-am1.png?w=558&amp;h=452\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2014-05-15 at 8.58.03 AM\" width=\"558\" height=\"452\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">Two months ago, following a series of Facebook-related NSA spying leaks, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg stated in a\u00a0<a style=\"color: #4479bd;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/zuck\/posts\/10101301165605491\" target=\"_blank\">blog post<\/a>\u00a0that he\u2019s<span style=\"color: #231f20;\">\u00a0\u201cconfused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behavior of the U.S. government.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"color: #231f20;\">According to\u00a0<a style=\"color: #4479bd;\" href=\"https:\/\/firstlook.org\/theintercept\/article\/2014\/03\/12\/nsa-plans-infect-millions-computers-malware\/\">a report by\u00a0<\/a><a style=\"color: #4479bd;\" target=\"_blank\">The Intercept<\/a>, the above slides do not reveal the NSA\u2019s Facebook surveillance program in full. The report states\u00a0that the NSA also\u00a0\u201cdisguises itself as a fake Facebook server\u201d to perform\u00a0\u201c<a style=\"color: #4479bd;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Man-in-the-middle\" target=\"_blank\">man-in-the-middle<\/a>\u201d and \u201cman-on-the-side\u201d attacks and spread malware [below].<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/88822483\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">As we wrote at the time, the \u201cNSA\u2019s Facebook targeting is reportedly a response to the declining success of other malware injection techniques. Previous techniques included the use of \u201cspam emails that trick targets into clicking a malicious link.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">Following\u00a0the report, released in March,\u00a0Zuckerberg\u00a0said, \u201cWhen our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we\u2019re protecting you against criminals, not our own government.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"color: #231f20;\">Zuckerberg claimed he disapproved of the NSA\u2019s actions and said\u00a0that he\u2019s spoken to president Barack Obama by phone to \u201cexpress [his]\u00a0frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">VentureBeat has reached out to both Akamai and Facebook for comment on the matter.<\/p>\n<p>Via\u00a0<a style=\"color: #0066cc;\" href=\"http:\/\/venturebeat.com\/2014\/05\/15\/how-the-nsa-fbi-made-facebook-the-perfect-mass-surveillance-tool\/\" target=\"_blank\">venturebeat.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Harrison Weber The National Security Agency and the FBI teamed up in October 2010 to develop techniques for turning Facebook into a surveillance tool. Documents\u00a0released alongside\u00a0security journalist Glenn Greenwald\u2019s new book, \u201cNo Place To Hide,\u201d reveal the NSA and FBI partnership, in which the two agencies developed techniques for exploiting Facebook chats, capturing private photos, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-118926","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118926\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}