13 ms·
NSA contractor indicted over mammoth theft of classified data
- alexnewman 10y agoYea I am sorry I stopped believing these people a while ago
- WestCoastJustin 10y agoHe supposedly had 50TB+ worth of data sitting at his place. This almost seems inaccurate as that's like 25 x 2TB drives. I know this is said to have happened over 20 years, but hard drive capacity has only increased within the last few years to where this is manageable. He must have had a huge storage array. Logistically, how do you even walk out with that? Cannot transfer it over the network as that would take years and surely not go unnoticed. This included 75% of exploits used by the NSA. Just seems so crazy that this could go unnoticed for so long. You think they would be watching everything like a hawk. http://boingboing.net/2016/10/20/nsa-contractor-harold-thomas-m.html http://boingboing.net/2016/10/20/nsa-contractor-harold-thoma...
- austincheney 10y agoYou couldn't transfer it over the network anyways, because the networks are physically separated from the normal internet (NIPR). You cannot use massive storage devices either (like hard disks, sd cards, flash drives). He would have had to hand carry stuff out, probably on optical media.
- WestCoastJustin 10y agoAh, great points. Thanks.
- digler999 10y ago> probably on optical media. I cringe thinking NSA would have DVD-burners connected to any machine on their campus. Sure in their labs they probably have every device ever made -- strictly labeled and used only for hacking. But it would be asinine to have their "corporate" machines equipped with them. I bet he either used a microSD card or just put HDDs in his pocket.
- austincheney 10y agoYou need optical media to transfer content from one network to another without setting off alarms. The network admin knows if you plug in mass storage devices within about 2 seconds. Mass storage devices require a mounting process that communicates with both the bios and the OS. The OS will then send an alert to a known point on the network, and if configured directly will respond to the switch at the local network which will drop the subnet. If you are dumb enough to pop a USB device in everybody in your office will know in seconds as they lose their connection. Then your boss will get scolded and you will get stuck with remedial training. It is pretty damn embarrassing like wearing a dunce cap. They may not always know who the offending person is, but they will have the IP of the offending terminal and a hardware signature of the offending device.
- openmosix 10y agoYup, many organizations have this policy enforced. It'd be crazy to think a place like NSA would let you connect your USB stick to any of their terminals.
- balabaster 10y agoWhat if he had a legit reason for connecting mass storage, but just abused the privilege while connected? Network admins know he's connecting it, know what he says he's doing, has approved it and thus overrides and ignores any warnings... Equally, what's to stop them being in the know of exactly what he's doing and abusing their privilege to allow him to do it? You assume he's acting alone... what if he wasn't? The best lies contain elements of truth... or are almost entirely true. Find a legit reason for bypassing security and while you're bypassed, abuse it without getting caught.
- noonespecial 10y agoUntil I learn more I'm going to take the 50TB accusation like the (as much as) 300 years jail time they're likely threatening him with to get the plea deal. Sound like there might be some funny counting going on.
- jlgaddis 10y ago> 300 years $ echo 20*10 | bc 200 Funny counting indeed. <g>
- digler999 10y agoit wouldn't be surprising that a guy who spent his life in infosec/IT might have a 50tb NAS at home. My guess is he was addicted to "stealing", the same way some people shoplift for the thrill. It can feel empowering to steal because it gives the thief control. So subconsciously he's thinking "huh, NSA thinks they're so tough and powerful, but look how I can break their rules right under their nose and they can't even figure it out". Or perhaps he exfiltrated people's phone calls/emails. Thats another power theory: "I'm as big and mighty as the NSA because I can tap communication lines and invade privacy just like they can". Like others in this thread, I dont think he was a spy. A spy wouldn't hoard shit in his basement that could get him life in prison. He would have stolen it, sold it, and GTFO.
- noonespecial 10y agoOh he might have, but I'm guessing they just added up all of the space from every hard drive they found searching his house to get that number. Well, he's a thief, they all could have teh secritz on them.
- ohyes 10y ago50 terabytes wouldn't take years to transfer over the Internet, maybe a month or so.
- WestCoastJustin 10y agoYeah, I was kind of thinking about going unnoticed though. I was involved in a project a few years ago where we transferred 500TB to a new data centre and it took about 3 months. You're going to saturate pipes and have things pinned using multiple streams. Definitely not using a home connection. So, you'd want to fly under the radar, and really slow things down. That's where my head was at when making that comment. As one of the replies mentions though, you cannot even transfer over the network, as they are physically separated.
- drvdevd 10y agoI think you're right.. The numbers don't seem to add up. They seem like inflated "media" numbers. The media/general public just knows 1TB is "big" (because most people just need gigabytes) and 50 times that is Serious Business.
- jasonkostempski 10y agoThey probably uncompressed all data and stretched every jpg to poster size and converted it to bmp to make the number sound bigger.
- madiathomas 10y agoIntelligence agencies are always years ahead of us in terms of technology. They probably had access to 2TB hard drives 5-10 years before us.
- throwaway2048 10y agoits extremely doubtful they are that far ahead when commerical offerings have been competing for any edge for the last 30+ years.
- Retric 10y agoDVD's hold up to 8.5GB. So under 6,000 DVD's which sounds like a lot, but at under 1$ each so it's only like 5k. A spindle can hold 100 and you get more than 4 of them per cubic foot. So call it 15 cubic feet of DVD's that's basically just a single plastic tub. Granted, more than that with CD's and less than that with Blue Ray disks. But, if he took burnable DVD's home regularly. Anyway, it would be interesting if he had a fetish for this stuff, wanted to sell it, or was just being really stupid. PS: Only idea I have for a dumb, but plausible explication is if he was backing up his classified work laptop every week or something.
- rising-sky 10y agoIt's doubtful he wanted to sell it, if the information was of any value, rhetorical, considering the NSA is up in arms about it, then he wouldn't have had trouble finding a willing and able buyer in all of those 20 years. *edited for grammar
- jdironman 10y agoIf he actually did it, I believe it may have been for present documentation and future accountability. Nothing at the time, but over time it became a habit. Which might have explained how quickly he admitted once confronted with the original evidence of 6 documents. But anyways, see my other top level comment for what I really want to know.
- FLUX-YOU 10y agoHis rate of moving data could have increased as storage density increased. It's probably not 50TB / 20 years = rate
- anigbrowl 10y agoHe supposedly had 50TB+ worth of data sitting at his place. This almost seems inaccurate as that's like 25 x 2TB drives. My wife works in electronic discovery, processing huge caches of corporate documents for complex litigation. 50tb is a lot of data but it's not that much in organizational terms. From what I remember when her firm was processing material for the SEC-Goldman Sachs litigation over the financial crisis (a case which involved several years of discovery work), they were dealing with a roughly similar quality, 30 or 60tb of data. I've got an unopened 5tb drive sitting right here on my desk. No offense, but I feel you're arguing against the existence of large trucks because you've never had any reason to drive one. You think they would be watching everything like a hawk. You would, but in my experience managers pay about as much attention to IT people as they do to the janitors. That goes double for contractors, because the buyers tend to assume security screening and so on was built into the terms of the contract. At one point I was the only IT guy for a small private bank in London; I was contracted to work for Digital Equipment Corp, who in turn had the corporate contract with this bank due the contractual arrangements between DEC and the much larger corporate parent of the private bank. I got the job because their existing guy fired or quit in a hurry or something and they were desperate. Technically it was easy, I just ran backups, did a few service calls around the office each day if anyone had a problem, and most of the actual work consisted of passing on the bank's procurement requests to the DEC people. Eventually I lost the gig because the bank got sick of dealing with DEC and terminated the contract but I got glowing personal references which was nice. I remember being sort of amazed at the degree of freedom I had. As you may know, small private banks cater exclusively to the ultra-rich, and I was the only IT person on site and had total access to anything. If I were more financially oriented I could have enriched myself in any number of ways.
- WestCoastJustin 10y ago> No offense, but I feel you're arguing against the existence of large trucks because you've never had any reason to drive one. I'm not saying that companies don't have 50TB of documents, or that you cannot transfer 50TB, either via the network or physically. I am saying that for a place which prides itself as the "National Security Agency", they should have extremely tight security about transferring 50TB of their crown jewels, either via the network or physically. So, I think we are talking about different things. Goldman Sachs and DEC are in totally different ballparks, or should be, compared to the NSA. I don't really care either way. I just think logistically this is a crazy amount of data for someone to walk off with at a place that should be the model of a secure site.
- jlgaddis 10y agoFrom The Verge article [0]: > It was allegedly all kept on computers and drives at Martin’s Glen Burnie, Maryland home. [0]: http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/8/14555238/nsa-leak-indictment-harold-thomas-martin-20-charges http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/8/14555238/nsa-leak-indictmen...
- metaphor 10y agoWhat makes you think the data was all stored on standard hard drives? How about: CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, magneto-optical disks, Zip disks, USB thumb drives, high-density archive media that I'm not even familiar with...oh, and hard drives. What does huge storage array even mean in today's context? I recently built a 20TB server at a price point less than a new 13" MacBook Pro for personal use that occupies a cross section the size of a notebook sitting at the edge my desk...all from commercial-grade hardware that's been on the market for at least 2 years. I would think that the home setup of any serious professional engineer who has been in industry for the better part of my adult life would have some sweet kit up his sleeves. Imagine this: authorities confiscate anything that looks like storage media, storage capacity rough order of magnitude is calculated, figures reported to media, an assumption is made that it's all highly classified, spin some click bait article. We're talking about a civilian contractor from private industry who supposedly played an "advisor" role, not some intern whose shoulder was constantly being looked over.
- cyberpunk 10y ago20TB less than the size of a notebook? I'm not calling outright fibs here but we're talking 10 2TB sata's here or what? I'd take maybe a 1U with SFF's, but then again I've not seen how big your laptop is ;) edit: yep, ok, I missed the words 'server' and 'cross section' there and thought you were talking about some magic home setup...... apologies and: doh!
- ewams 10y ago20TB of data can fit on 3 hard drives now...
- cyberpunk 10y agoI've clearly not been keeping up.. Assuming a stripe then we're talking 7-8TB drives? How much do those cost? I guess that's a kind of expensive setup for what's being suggested was his home setup though? 20TB in a mirror is cheap as in the DC, at home I've not pushed above about 5 (don't have that much data and thus won't spank so much money on capacity)... Are you running these things?
- xjwm 10y ago>You think they would be watching everything like a hawk. They probably do...but...as they say, "locks keep honest men honest." At some point, you have to have a level of trust that exists. A long term subersive employee will beat your locks eventually.
- harry8 10y agoLet's just say an average txt doc is 4k, and an average uncompressed bitmap of that same document is 40M. Documents with contents that would cost 50 terrabytes to scan and store as uncompressed tiff or whatever cost 5G as ascii. This is by way of illustration only. Just think "arrested with drugs having a street value of $10M" and ask yourself if that same kind of inflation is likely to be going on here in the prosecutions PR campaign - which is what this story is.[1] [1] Note that this could be a fair, reasonable, unbiased and accurate story, but it would be a heroic assumption not to consider the alternatives.
- tw04 10y agoI doubt all 50TB was collected in the first year. The 2TB hard drive was released in 2009... 8 years ago. I would be willing to bet his stash increased at a similar rate to drive sizes, if for no other reason than the fact that NSA data collections increased at what is likely a similar rate over that time. A year ago 6TB drives were already widely available, so now you're down to 10 drives. In other words, a medium sized home NAS for most nerds.
- astronautjones 10y agoThey certainly have a history of exaggerating numbers
- ynniv 10y agoSD cards today come in 512GB, so with two of them you can casually move 50TB+ in three months. Everyone underestimates sneakernet.
- rl3 10y agoA somewhat more informative article here: http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/8/14555238/nsa-leak-indictment-harold-thomas-martin-20-charges http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/8/14555238/nsa-leak-indictmen... 50TB is a lot for a single person. How the heck did he even store it all? The article mentions no motive. Without knowing all the facts, it almost seems like it was some sort of irrational compulsion.
- ekianjo 10y agoit says up to 50tb. knowing the sense of hyperbole of government agencies the reality is probably ten times less.
- CamperBob2 10y agoCop bytes.
- acqq 10y agoAnd even more probably most of the data are duplicates or even more probably non-classified data or even empty space on the media they've seized: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3149446/United-States-v-Harold-T-Martin-III.txt https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3149446/United-St... "GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSE TO DEFENDANT’S MOTION FOR A DETENTION HEARING:" "A conservative estimate of the volume of the digital information seized from the Defendant is approximately 50,000 gigabytes. This information must be fully reviewed by appropriate authorities to determine its source and classification level, as well as the extent to which it constitutes “national defense information.”" If he's indeed a digital hoarder, and it's still open if it even "constitutes national defense information" it can be anything, even counting his Blu-rays with movies?
- appleflaxen 10y agoThe NSA and federal government have lost the presumption of reasonableness in my eyes... rl3 mentioned no motive, and the possibility of a compulsion is a great hypothesis. if so, it's just one more example of the government persecuting the mentally ill to inflate their numbers (like the FBI agents who incite schizophrenic individuals to act on a hare-brained "bomb plot", and then bust them).
- tbihl 10y agoI'm not sure I really follow where you're going, but NSA is a very different organization from the FBI. Not only is this not good press for them, but probably there isn't any press that is good for them. They work best when they're being ignored, and the only time I can remember them seeking attention was that talk by the head of TAO early last year.
- bediger4000 10y agoNo press good for the NSA doesn't mean that no press for them is good for the rest of humanity (everyone has to consider NSA as a threat, really, not just non-USA-persons). Is is good for even US taxpayers to not know where $60+ billion dollars a year go? Is it good for US taxpayers to not know that every byte of Internet communications gets stored for later use against them? I don't think so.
- appleflaxen 10y agoThey are all part of the federal system, which does not work in the interest of the US public. yes, there are different factions within it (as with any large system) but they are all self-interested and controlled by global elites (not surprising, but also not the best for the public).
- besselheim 10y agoI wonder if this is at all related to the recent 'Shadow Brokers' leaks. Positive news that they caught him anyway, another Snowden-like espionage drama would be highly undesirable.
- Taek 10y agoIf the documents were as significant as the Snowden leaks, I would say better to have the drama than to let it go under the radar. If there wasn't really anything that interesting in the documents, then it probably wouldn't have been all that dramatic.
- sobinator 10y agohttps://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/government-contractor-facing-federal-indictment-willful-retention-national-defense https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/government-contractor-facing-... They should screen for laziness when vetting TS-SCI clearance. Something tells me that the only rational justification for this irrational move was that it somehow made his life easier. I don't think a mole would have the guts to pull something like this.
- bluedino 10y ago50TB is very, very plausible. Look at the October release: On Aug 27, 2016, search warrants were executed at Martin's residence in Glen Burnie, MD, including two storage sheds as well as upon his vehicle and person. During execution of the warrants, investigators located hard-copy documents and digital information stored on various devices and removable digital media. A large percentage of the materials recovered from Martin's residence and vehicle bore markings indicating that they were property of the US government Removable digital media. Let's just assume this guy had access to backup tapes and was stealing them. LTO tapes start out at what, 100GB and are something like 1TB each right now? The guy could very easily had a couple hundred backup tapes. Various devices. Maybe he had some servers, desktops, laptops, hell maybe a small (at the time) storage array or two. He had stuff stockpiled in his shed. The real question is, what was the data?
- maxander 10y agoPerhaps he didn't even want the data. "Hey, they're just going to toss this terabyte harddrive? What a waste!"
- kevin_thibedeau 10y agoOld drives are put through an industrial shredder.
- bitJericho 10y agoToo bad he wasn't able to release it publicly
- Taek 10y agoGiven how long he had it, doesn't seem like he had any intention to.
- jdironman 10y agoI feel like the problem with proving his innocence lies within proving that the documents which were found unconditionally and legitimately belonged to the US government or anyone for that matter. Why are such 'TOP SECRET' documents not hashed or otherwise? Anybody can Photoshop or even copy and paste an 'emblem' or 'indicia' as his original criminal complaint made by agent Jeremy Bucalo describes. Documents can be completely falsified especially if all that identifies it is a seal or marking and basic text. I just feel like there is something more here.
- tps5 10y agoIf your reaction to this news is "something more is going on here" then I think you need to take a step back and re-calibrate your bullshit detector. Could there be more to this than meets the eye? Yeah. There could also be more to the moon landing than meets the eye. It seems to me we all must, in our attempt to be rational, do our best to check our biases. For a lot of people on hackernews, that means second guessing your immediate "NSA cover-up" reaction to any item of news involving the NSA. I think the most likely scenario here is that the government is making an example of this man. I don't think that's right, and I hope he gets off with as slight a punishment as possible, but it is a fact that governments have secrets and have enacted laws in order to try to keep them.
- jdironman 10y agoIf we are to be rational, regarding anything at all which is to be truly understood, then all sides of an argument must be considered. Scrutinized, yes. Saying someone is just calling 'bullshit' and they need to rethink or re-calibrate their 'bullshit detectors' or initial thoughts is not in line with that. I agree with you at the same time that they could simply be making an example of this man. But, I believe they are 'making an example of him' to cover their own incompetence. I am not saying evidence has been planted, concocted, or otherwise. I am saying this just not seem like a cut and dried case of mishandling by a long term employee who should be more than aware of procedures and policies in place after 20 years.
- 10y ago
- jlgaddis 10y agoHe was raided and arrested in August. He was indicted today. Has he just been sitting in a jail cell -- without being charged -- in the meantime? I assume the government argued against letting him out on bond on the grounds that he was a national security risk. Edit: Looks like he was "charged with felony theft of classified government material" at that time, according to another article.
- drunkpotato 10y agoMeanwhile David Petraeus stole classified information and leaked it to his biographer, then lied about it to the FBI, and got a slap on the wrist. Let's see if Harold gets such a plum deal.
- awqrre 10y agoonly peons don't get slaps on the wrist...
- nickff 10y agoThe ship of state is the only ship that leaks from the top; administration officials release politically advantageous classified information all the time.
- dmix 10y agoAre you implying that the NYTimes and WaPo's "anonymous sources from inside the intelligence community" are not the independent opinions of random officials who happen to talk to journalists, as they are often presented, but carefully crafted messages to support their agencies agenda? You don't say... Only a crazy Intel officer would leak damaging privileged info to the press given the amount of money they invest in counter intelligence. This is the line General Petraeus crossed. No info goes to the press that results in uncontrolled blowback or merely for personal gain. But otherwise taking info out like a hoarder is just really bad security and a different matter that should be considered within that context.
- portpecos 10y agoWait, are you saying these Trump leaks are actually crafted to support agencies' agendas? >The leakiness of the Trump White House has been a boon to the press corps, who find themselves feasting on the juicy insider details that were hard to come by during the “No Drama Obama” years. http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/318621-trump-white-house-besieged-by-leaks http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/318621-trump-whit...
- slim 10y ago> Martin was employed by at least seven different private companies and assigned as a contractor to work at a number of government agencies Looks like a corruption scheme to me
- harry8 10y agoHonest question: Why haven't Booz Allen Hamilton had their contract revoked and put on a blacklist of never working for the government again?
- astronautjones 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money
- angry_octet 10y agoThey are a labour hire contractor in these instances. Some program needs qualified and cleared contractor staff, Booz have that sorted. The clearances are handled by another government agency (the notoriously hacked OPM) and their (sometimes lax) contractors. Probably his only interaction with Booz was they sent him a paycheck, 401k, social, health insurance, etc.
- zeveb 10y ago> Some program needs qualified and cleared contractor staff, Booz have that sorted. Apparently not. After Snowden & this guy, BAH clearly has issues providing qualified staff. (and yes, apparently OPM has issues too)
- milesf 10y agoI'm curious to know how he was caught. He managed to evade detection for 20 years as a contractor? For the NSA not to have checks and balances internally in place to be able to detect illegal access to assets by 3rd parties a little faster than two decades is incompetent.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoRight! He was caught because of an 'audit'. The first in 20 years? Incredible.
- brilliantcode 10y agoI'm just super curious to know what the data holds. It'd be interesting to see what they were doing and what they saw coming from 1996 and onwards.
- jmnicolas 10y agoCheck if Booz Allen Hamilton is recruiting, you might get lucky ;-)
- jorblumesea 10y ago1. Booz Allen is the same contractor as Snowden. I wonder at what point does the Govt reconsider their relationship. 2. Thoughts on what he wanted/did with all of that information? It seems extremely amateur and not someone versed in tradecraft to have all of that just sitting around. I wonder if he was selling this stuff on the side, Shadow Brokers tools were definitely govt sponsored.
- UnfalseDesign 10y agoBooz Allen Hamilton has 22,000 employees. I'm going to guess that the government won't see 2 of them stealing document and hence tear up all their contracts with Booz Allen. Also, the article said that Booz Allen is hiring a form FBI director to lead an audit into their security and personnel. That should keep the government from reconsidering their contracts.
- fjdlwlv 10y agoYep, and if not, they can call the current directors to offer to hire them in a couple of years too.
- the_common_man 10y agoI am curious what happens if this happens at Google or Facebook. How hard is it to reach Google/FB user data for an engineer?
- effie 10y agoI think it depends on whether the engineer works in capacity where he has regular access to the data as part of his work goals. If yes (analytics people), easy. If not (frontend developer), extremely difficult.
- ommunist 10y agoI fail to recognise how 200 years of jail to a 53-years man can compensate damage to the US national security of that size.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoNo demonstrable damage? It sat in his garage.
- ommunist 10y agoPerhaps, this was a technical backup, to help NSA recover their lost data, just in case.
- JackFr 10y agoIts astonishing that Booz Allen is still able to work contracts for the NSA and that this guys superiors at the NSA haven't seemed to face any sanction (at least publicly.) The managerial tree on this guy through at least two levels up should be fired and potentially face further sanctions. Booz Allen should be forbidden from working contracts which require clearance for 10 years. The larger issue isn't what this guy did (or even what Snowden did) -- it's a failure of the organization and a failure of process. Organizationally, any one bad actor, especially a low/medium level contractor, should not be able to do this.
- MrZongle2 10y ago" Booz Allen should be forbidden from working contracts which require clearance for 10 years." That would most likely kill Booz Allen. Between this and Snowden, I'd hate to be a cleared employee there (again); in addition to the increased/remedial training I'm sure has been put on their plates, they're probably getting panicky emails and warnings from principals and partners about the importance of their position. It's probably like the TPS report memo scene from "Office Space". But firings two levels up? Doubtful. The wagons would be circled and enough CYA emails sent to prevent that.
- JackFr 10y agoI agree with you on all points about the impossibility of my recommendations. But I still believe it's an organizational failure at the highest levels - this guy is the symptom not the disease.
- MrZongle2 10y agoIt's certainly a possibility, though I wonder how Booz Allen management could have recognized a potential problem. It's entirely possible that Martin was simply embedded with the NSA and Booz Allen management only saw him every couple of weeks as a "pulse check". If the client (NSA) had no complaints, then Martin could have been considered a "model" employee. And even if his fellow employees knew he was a hoarder...would that have really been cause for suspicion? Additionally, in fairness to Booz Allen, in the article it states: "Martin was employed as a private contractor by at least seven different companies, working for several government agencies beginning in 1993 after serving in the U.S. Navy for four years, according to the indictment." So if we're going to hang Booz Allen management out to dry, there might be a few other companies deserving of it as well.
- pdimitar 10y agoYou know, when a guy who employed Edward Snowden is allowed to steal classified data for 20 years (even after Snowden's revelations), then I think we all should reassess our view of the No-Such-Agency as an all-powerful entity. Clearly, they are plagued by the same bureaucracy hurdles and lack of attention to human resource detail as every other governmental agency. Things might not be so bad after all.
- fjdlwlv 10y agoPowerful+incompetent = dangerous, just in a different way than powerful+competent