15 June 2013. Matthew Aid, Inside the NSA: Peeling Back the Curtain:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/inside-the-nsa-peeling-
back-the-curtain-on-americas-intelligence-agency-8658016.html
12 June 2013
NSA Office of Tailored Access Operations
Matthew Aid Website:
http://www.matthewaid.com/
Source: Foreign Policy via South China Post
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1259175/inside-nsas-ultra-secret-
china-hacking-group
Inside the NSAs ultra-secret China hacking group
Wednesday, 12 June, 2013, 4:19pm
Mathew M. Aid
Last weekend, US President Barack Obama sat down for a series of meetings
with Chinas newly appointed leader, Xi Jinping. We know that the two
leaders spoke at length about the topic du jour cyber-espionage
a subject that has long frustrated officials in Washington and is now front
and centre with the revelations of sweeping US data mining. The media has
focused at length on Chinas aggressive attempts to electronically steal
US military and commercial secrets, but Xi pushed back at the "shirt-sleeves"
summit, noting that China, too, was the recipient of cyber-espionage. But
what Obama probably neglected to mention is that he has his own hacker army,
and it has burrowed its way deep, deep into Chinas networks.
When the agenda for the meeting at the Sunnylands estate outside Palm Springs,
California, was agreed to several months ago, both parties agreed that it
would be a nice opportunity for President Xi, who assumed his post in March,
to discuss a wide range of security and economic issues of concern to both
countries. According to diplomatic sources, the issue of cyber-security was
not one of the key topics to be discussed at the summit. Sino-American economic
relations, climate change, and the growing threat posed by North Korea were
supposed to dominate the discussions.
Then, two weeks ago, White House officials leaked to the press that Obama
intended to raise privately with Xi the highly contentious issue of Chinas
widespread use of computer hacking to steal US government, military, and
commercial secrets. According to a Chinese diplomat in Washington who spoke
in confidence, Beijing was furious about the sudden elevation of cyber-security
and Chinese espionage on the meetings agenda. According to a diplomatic
source in Washington, the Chinese government was even angrier that the White
House leaked the new agenda item to the press before Washington bothered
to tell Beijing about it.
Last weeks revelations about the National Security Agencys Prism
and Verizon metadata collection only add fuel to Beijings position.
So the Chinese began to hit back. Senior Chinese officials have publicly
accused the US government of hypocrisy and have alleged that Washington is
also actively engaged in cyber-espionage. When the latest allegation of Chinese
cyber-espionage was levelled in late May in a front-page Washington Post
article, which alleged that hackers employed by the Chinese military had
stolen the blueprints of over three dozen American weapons systems, the Chinese
governments top internet official, Huang Chengqing, shot back that
Beijing possessed "mountains of data" showing that the United States has
engaged in widespread hacking designed to steal Chinese government secrets.
Last weeks revelations about the National Security Agencys Prism
and Verizon metadata collection from a 29-year-old former CIA undercover
operative named Edward J. Snowden, who is now living in Hong Kong, only add
fuel to Beijings position.
But Washington never publicly responded to Huangs allegation, and nobody
in the US media seems to have bothered to ask the White House if there is
a modicum of truth to the Chinese charges.
It turns out that the Chinese governments allegations are essentially
correct. According to a number of confidential sources, a highly secretive
unit of the National Security Agency (NSA), the US governments huge
electronic eavesdropping organisation, called the Office of Tailored Access
Operations (TAO) has successfully penetrated Chinese computer and
telecommunications systems for almost 15 years, generating some of the best
and most reliable intelligence information about what is going on inside
the Peoples Republic of China.
Hidden away inside the massive NSA headquarters complex at Fort Meade, Maryland,
in a large suite of offices segregated from the rest of the agency, TAO is
a mystery to many NSA employees. Relatively few NSA officials have complete
access to information about TAO because of the extraordinary sensitivity
of its operations, and it requires a special security clearance to gain access
to the units work spaces inside the NSA operations complex. The door
leading to its ultramodern operations centre is protected by armed guards,
an imposing steel door that can only be entered by entering the correct six-digit
code into a keypad, and a retinal scanner to ensure that only those individuals
specially cleared for access get through the door.
According to former NSA officials interviewed for this article, TAOs
mission is simple. It collects intelligence information on foreign targets
by surreptitiously hacking into their computers and telecommunications systems,
cracking passwords, compromising the computer security systems protecting
the targeted computer, stealing the data stored on computer hard drives,
and then copying all the messages and data traffic passing within the targeted
e-mail and text-messaging systems. The technical term of art used by NSA
to describe these operations is computer network exploitation (CNE).
TAO has successfully penetrated Chinese computer and telecom systems for
almost 15 years
TAO is also responsible for developing the information that would allow the
United States to destroy or damage foreign computer and telecommunications
systems with a cyberattack if so directed by the president. The organisation
responsible for conducting such a cyberattack is US Cyber Command (Cybercom),
whose headquarters is located at Fort Meade and whose chief is the director
of the NSA, Gen. Keith Alexander.
Commanded since April of this year by Robert Joyce, who formerly was the
deputy director of the NSAs Information Assurance Directorate (responsible
for protecting the US governments communications and computer systems),
TAO, sources say, is now the largest and arguably the most important component
of the NSAs huge Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) Directorate, consisting
of over 1,000 military and civilian computer hackers, intelligence analysts,
targeting specialists, computer hardware and software designers, and electrical
engineers.
The sanctum sanctorum of TAO is its ultra-modern operations centre at Fort
Meade called the Remote Operations Center (ROC), which is where the units
600 or so military and civilian computer hackers (they themselves CNE operators)
work in rotating shifts 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
These operators spend their days (or nights) searching the ether for computers
systems and supporting telecommunications networks being used by, for example,
foreign terrorists to pass messages to their members or sympathisers. Once
these computers have been identified and located, the computer hackers working
in the ROC break into the targeted computer systems electronically using
special software designed by TAOs own corps of software designers and
engineers specifically for this purpose, download the contents of the
computers hard drives, and place software implants or other devices
called buggies inside the computers operating systems,
which allows TAO intercept operators at Fort Meade to continuously monitor
the e-mail and/or text-messaging traffic coming in and out of the computers
or hand-held devices.
TAOs work would not be possible without the team of gifted computer
scientists and software engineers belonging to the Data Network Technologies
Branch, who develop the sophisticated computer software that allows the
units operators to perform their intelligence collection mission. A
separate unit within TAO called the Telecommunications Network Technologies
Branch (TNT) develops the techniques that allow TAOs hackers to covertly
gain access to targeted computer systems and telecommunications networks
without being detected. Meanwhile, TAOs Mission Infrastructure Technologies
Branch develops and builds the sensitive computer and telecommunications
monitoring hardware and support infrastructure that keeps the effort up and
running.
TAO even has its own small clandestine intelligence-gathering unit called
the Access Technologies Operations Branch, which includes personnel seconded
by the CIA and the FBI, who perform what are described as off-net
operations, which is a polite way of saying that they arrange for CIA
agents to surreptitiously plant eavesdropping devices on computers and/or
telecommunications systems overseas so that TAOs hackers can remotely
access them from Fort Meade.
It is important to note that TAO is not supposed to work against domestic
targets in the United States or its possessions. This is the responsibility
of the FBI, which is the sole US intelligence agency chartered for domestic
telecommunications surveillance. But in light of information about wider
NSA snooping, one has to prudently be concerned about whether TAO is able
to perform its mission of collecting foreign intelligence without accessing
communications originating in or transiting through the United States.
Since its creation in 1997, TAO has garnered a reputation for producing some
of the best intelligence available to the US intelligence community not only
about China, but also on foreign terrorist groups, espionage activities being
conducted against the United States by foreign governments, ballistic missile
and weapons of mass destruction developments around the globe, and the latest
political, military, and economic developments around the globe.
TAOs operators [are] tapping into thousands of foreign computer systems
and accessing password-protected computer hard drives and e-mails of targets
around the world.
According to a former NSA official, by 2007 TAOs 600 intercept operators
were secretly tapping into thousands of foreign computer systems and accessing
password-protected computer hard drives and e-mails of targets around the
world. As detailed in my 2009 history of NSA, The Secret Sentry, this highly
classified intercept programme, known at the time as Stumpcursor, proved
to be critically important during the US Armys 2007 surge
in Iraq, where it was credited with single-handedly identifying and locating
over 100 Iraqi and al Qaeda insurgent cells in and around Baghdad. That same
year, sources report that TAO was given an award for producing particularly
important intelligence information about whether Iran was trying to build
an atomic bomb.
By the time Obama became president of the United States in January 2009,
TAO had become something akin to the wunderkind of the US intelligence community.
"Its become an industry unto itself," a former NSA official said of
TAO at the time. "They go places and get things that nobody else in the IC
[intelligence community] can."
Given the nature and extraordinary political sensitivity of its work, it
will come as no surprise that TAO has always been, and remains, extraordinarily
publicity shy. Everything about TAO is classified top secret codeword, even
within the hyper-secretive NSA. Its name has appeared in print only a few
times over the past decade, and the handful of reporters who have dared inquire
about it have been politely but very firmly warned by senior US intelligence
officials not to describe its work for fear that it might compromise its
ongoing efforts. According to a senior US defence official who is familiar
with TAOs work, "The agency believes that the less people know about
them [TAO] the better."
The word among NSA officials is that if you want to get promoted or recognised,
get a transfer to TAO as soon as you can. The current head of the NSAs
SIGINT Directorate, Teresa Shea, 54, got her current job in large part because
of the work she did as chief of TAO in the years after the 9/11 terrorist
attacks, when the unit earned plaudits for its ability to collect extremely
hard-to-come-by information during the latter part of George W. Bushs
administration. We do not know what the information was, but sources suggest
that it must have been pretty important to propel Shea to her position today.
But according to a recently retired NSA official, TAO "is the place to be
right now".
Theres no question that TAO has continued to grow in size and importance
since Obama took office in 2009, which is indicative of its outsized role.
In recent years, TAOs collection operations have expanded from Fort
Meade to some of the agencys most important listening posts in the
United States. There are now mini-TAO units operating at the huge NSA SIGINT
intercept and processing centres at NSA Hawaii at Wahiawa on the island of
Oahu; NSA Georgia at Fort Gordon, Georgia; and NSA Texas at the Medina Annex
outside San Antonio, Texas; and within the huge NSA listening post at Buckley
Air Force Base outside Denver.
The problem is that TAO has become so large and produces so much valuable
intelligence information that it has become virtually impossible to hide
it anymore. The Chinese government is certainly aware of TAOs activities.
The "mountains of data" statement by Chinas top internet official,
Huang Chengqing, is clearly an implied threat by Beijing to release this
data. Thus it is unlikely that President Obama pressed President Xi too hard
at the Sunnydale summit on the question of Chinas cyber-espionage
activities. As any high-stakes poker player knows, you can only press your
luck so far when the guy on the other side of the table knows what cards
you have in your hand.
(c) 2013, Foreign Policy
Mathew M. Aid is the author of Intel Wars: The Secret History of the Fight
Against Terror and The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National
Security Agency, and is co-editor with Cees Wiebes of Secrets of Signals
Intelligence During the Cold War and Beyond.
|