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CIA Intercepts Underpin Assessment Saudi Crown Prince Targeted Khashoggi
- onetimemanytime 8y agoCare to guess how CIA did it? I think MBS knows he's a target of secret services...I doubt he sent a normal, unencrypted sms text.
- amerine 8y agoWhy do you think that?
- onetimemanytime 8y agoA head of state such as SA, known to buy latest tech and hacking tools, to use un-encrypted messages? I'm wondering if CIA has a way in encrypted chats and only uses that info in rare instances--and even then without confirming anything. But MBS knows what he used...
- ianai 8y agoOr they used any of a number of more traditional methods to surveil him. Hidden cameras, spies, etc
- baybal2 8y agoThere was a bank in Russia that hired a dude better known under a moniker "Pchela" to enforce use of pgp, and infosec in general. He devised a plan under which staff is trained, tested, and punished for incompliance. Once the whole of banks ~1200 people staff got certified, they set a deadline for enforcement after which anybody caught will be fired on spot. The day after the deadline they spotted ~60 people in the bank sending plaintext, or replying to an unsigned email. And among them, one director level employee. They had to fire them all, including a directress who went on trying to suing them for years.
- baybal2 8y agoI wanted to say here that powerful and smart people are not immune at all to doing stupid things if they have no discipline.
- misnome 8y agoThis sounds interesting, but I can't seem to find the story. Any other information to help track it down?
- baybal2 8y agoThat's an account I got first hand. The bank in question is Asia Pacific Bank. A small regional bank in Russian far east.
- vehementi 8y agoOr, they murder people with such frequency and lack of consequence that, why bother encrypting? Why would anyone pay attention this time?
- kenny87 8y agoyeah sad, but true.
- leroy_masochist 8y agoThese guys are not exactly masters of tradecraft; look at the wet work team's ham-handed attempt to impersonate Khashoggi leaving the embassy. Or for that matter, pretty much any aspect of that whole operation. Smooth operators they are not. Also, the KSA is basically a one-man dictatorship at this point. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the Saudi COMSEC guy is not giving MBS a stern talking-to every time he does impulsive 31-year-old dictator stuff like, for example, using unsecure messaging services to communicate with his goons while they're murdering a dissident overseas.
- jocoda 8y ago... or it could be simple arrogance. The certainty that there would be no comebacks or consequences ...
- onetimemanytime 8y agoafter reading https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kzjmze/saud-al-qahtani-saudi-arabia-hacking-team https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kzjmze/saud-al-qa... I think they are screwed, too much money and no in house INFOSEC. Whoever they hire, is likely to be in touch with foreign secret services before they do the job. The fact that they have a common fixer posting on forums to buy zero days is very amateurish and shows their sorry state. USA, Russia, China, UK etc all have homegrown expert with security clearances doing that stuff. Maybe MBS is too dumb to use open source apps like Signal, who knows?
- kenny87 8y agoyeah, we often overestimate the general OPSEC awareness and measures these guys take. I mean doing this in a foreign embassy, in Turkey of all places, in the foyer? When I worked overseas our security people told us to assume everything is bugged ... they swept the SCIF everyday, and before any meeting where sensitive information is discussed. Basically, anything not in the SCIF is capable of being monitored/hacked by intelligence services.
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- ryanlol 8y ago>known to buy latest tech and hacking tools, to use un-encrypted messages? Google “nokia2mon”, the saudis are definitely not masters of tradecraft. He was very active on a US based hacking forum for years, and everyone knew he worked for KSA.
- arcticfox 8y agoIf anyone's curious, it took me a minute to find: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kzjmze/saud-al-qahtani-saudi-arabia-hacking-team https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kzjmze/saud-al-qa...
- mbesto 8y agoHillary Clinton, the secretary of state for arguably the most technically advanced country in the world used a private server to send classified information. Assumptions like these are dangerous. Note - do not turn this into a "but her emails" discussion.
- AJ007 8y agoA non technical person who has access to droves of intelligence gleaned from spying may be unaware that they have nothing but a very superficial comprehension as to what is actually going on. I would venture to say that a great number of leaders in the west, east, developed and developing countries could not describe how a computer works. Don’t bother asking them about encryption.
- jf- 8y agoIt’s paywalled, so I can’t see what what kind of messages they were, e.g. sms, whatsapp etc. Even though it seems stupid for someone in his position to send ordinary texts, he may not know that. Think of trump using his own phone to tweet.
- garmaine 8y agoIt’s pay walled, but the text I can see gives no indication that the cia could read the text. Just that at least 11 messages were sent. Sounds like traffic analysis.
- onetimemanytime 8y ago11 messages with a few hours before /after? makes sense, and let the Saudis think that we know the what the messages say. If he sent e message every 3 days normally and then sent 11 the day of the killing...
- garmaine 8y agoThese are messages between MBS and the guy organizing the killing, not MBS messages generally which would be rather circumstantial.
- clickme_zsh 8y agohttps://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox - for firefox https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome - for chrome
- gonzo41 8y agoprobably a rootkit on the device to catch the message before transit. Though I wonder if tools like TEMPEST work for mobile phone screens.
- yodon 8y agoPutting a root kit on a head of state's phone would be a great way to have your penetration discovered, so it's probably not the route they took, and TEMPEST wouldn't work on phone screens as it was a 1980's technique targeting the RF emissions of CRT displays common then (and which were fundamentally different in nature from modern solid state displays).
- sorokod 8y agoShould be pretty easy if US was involved in setting up the Saudi government's infosec
- crispyambulance 8y agoGiven that the target was going to the embassy to get a marriage license, I believe that MBS deliberately wanted to spread fear by disappearing a journalist. I think MBS very much expected to be found out, but likely assumed that it would not be such a public spectacle in US media with actual implementation details. Trump played along with it as much as he could.
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- vtesucks 8y agoIs that an official cia statement?
- onetimemanytime 8y agoI doubt CIA does official statements like this, but WSJ has their sources. So they make the statements and they don't. No matter what, CIA must've revealed a method, like the Turks did when they claimed they had a video. But then, it's a Game of Thrones on a very important country so it may be worth it. Maybe we'll keep the oil cheaper for a few years ;)
- Natsu 8y agoWell, that assumes any of this is true. The press is happily repeating anything it hears from Erdogan, who has his own stake in this and who is no saint either. I have no love for the Saudis, nor many of the other countries over there, though. I tend to view it as Game of Thrones material for a foreign state and I hate it, but figure that it's really none of our business.
- assblaster 8y agoMost likely intentionally released and used as a bargaining chip by President Trump to get cheaper oil.
- joecool1029 8y agoLink to get you around paywall: http://facebook.com/l.php?u= http://facebook.com/l.php?u= https://www.wsj.com/articles/cia-intercepts-underpin-assessment-saudi-crown-prince-targeted-khashoggi-1543640460 https://www.wsj.com/articles/cia-intercepts-underpin-assessm...
- ShorsHammer 8y agoI save it as a bookmark, surprisingly still works after years, doesn't require a facebook account. javascript:window.location="https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u="+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);
- hardlianotion 8y agoHeh - I think you have just shown it to the wrong people. Link doesn't work no more.
- ykevinator 8y agoI cannot believe this works (made a bookmarklet https://i.imgur.com/ITBtZUF.png https://i.imgur.com/ITBtZUF.png). Thank you for sharing
- eisa01 8y agoOr pay 49 cents at Blendle (refund if you don’t like it) https://blendle.com/i/wsjcom/cia-intercepts-underpin-assessment-saudi-crown-prince-targeted-khashoggi/bnl-wsj-20181201-SB11960811959454964338004584626412934419906 https://blendle.com/i/wsjcom/cia-intercepts-underpin-assessm...
- dreamer_soul 8y agoWhat kind of Facebook thing is this?
- dacur 8y agoYou can also paste the link after outline.com, so: outline.com/https://www.wsj.com/articles/cia-intercepts-underpin-assessment-saudi-crown-prince-targeted-khashoggi-1543640460 https://www.wsj.com/articles/cia-intercepts-underpin-assessm... , which will then give you a shortened link you can share (https://outline.com/tb5TCL https://outline.com/tb5TCL).
- madengr 8y agoMeanwhile, GM concentrates on SUV and truck sales, and Americans are once again suckered by low gas prices. Now picture a grinning sheik, shaking the hand of Uncle Sam, while hiding a giant religious sword behind his back. That’s Saudi Arabia.
- cm2187 8y agoNot the I have much sympathy for the Saudi, but that’s lot of fuss for one extrajudicial killing. How many drone strikes did Obama order? How many people did Putin get assassinated? Outside of a handful of tiny countries, I don’t think any head of state didn’t order some assassination one way or another in the last 2 years.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- baxtr 8y agoI think the opposite conclusion should be true. Make any other extrajudicial killing as transparent and visible as this one and you’ll get the same level of “fuss”
- penagwin 8y agoAlso that the drone strikes are against "terrorists" and not "journalists" (although how to confirm this I'm not sure). While any extra judicial killings are a very bad direction IMO, most people would agree that democracy should protect journalists but not terrorists. Tl;Dr - supposedly if we took the people who get drone strikes to court they would be found guilty in the states anyway, a journalist wouldn't be so there killing is considered unjustified
- jtbayly 8y agoDrone strikes regularly kill people who are not the targets. Children. Journalists.
- Steel_Phoenix 8y agoAnd often intentionally. See "predator double tap strikes".
- mrunkel 8y agoThank god all the terrorists wear t-shirts identifying them as such. Also, luckily everyone in the world agrees who the terrorists are, so it's not a problem. Furthermore, it's awesome that governments never use the terrorist label on people they just don't like. Thought experiments: Are the people that Kim Jong Un calls "terrorists" good guys or bad guys? Are people that drop explosives remotely from miles away "terrorists" or "good guys?" Why do we bother with trials in this country? Since those people would probably be found guilty, wouldn't it be better to just find them guilty from the offset? Especially when issuing lethal sentences! This is not meant to be snarky, at least not a lot, just trying to show that things aren't this clear cut.
- leroy_masochist 8y agoIt's highly, highly unlikely that the SIGINT enterprise captured metadata but not actual message traffic.
- JoeSmithson 8y agoWhy? That doesn't seem unlikely to me at all - it's far easier to capture meta-data than content.
- ryanlol 8y agoGiven how phone networks work, that’s not entirely obvious. Perhaps they’re just retroactively taking a look at billing data?
- willstrafach 8y agoUnless it was over WhatsApp.
- perseusprime11 8y agoI am glad there is a way for these things to come out and hopefully Karma catches up to this thug. It didn’t feel right that our country's leadership has set a price of $450B for our values as a nation. We are better off not taking their money than comprising our values.
- thwyagain29384 8y ago>We are better off not taking their money than comprising our values Nothing will happen. Just look at Kingdom of Saudi Barbaria and their use of petro dollars to lobby American politics and here are the results so far: 1. US-EU is willing to sanction Russia for the killing of an ex-Spy 2. US-EU is willing to sanction North Korea for the chemical assassination of Kim’s half brother 3. US-EU is willing to sanction Turkey for the jailing of a Christian Pastor. 4. US-EU is NOT willing to sanction Kingdom of Saudi Barbaria for the dismemberment and acid-dissolving of a US-based journalist. The US has an obvious obvious obvious set of double standards for policy enforcement when it comes to our oh so sweet ally.
- resters 8y agoYes, and American exceptionalism is the backward religion that fuels it. Comments like this get downvoted because people don’t like to have their religion insulted.
- resters 8y agoWithout hard data released to the public we should not take the claim at face value. The intelligence agencies have a lot of credibility to earn back after the Snowden revelations. No claims should be trusted without conclusive source material. The question is, why is the CIA trying to sway public opinion about this? Why do we tolerate the CIA or FBI being PR agencies for selectively leaked information? And why do we assume that their actions are in the national interest when it is not defined beyond platitudes about freedom.
- goalieca 8y agoI don’t think there’s any question as to the quality of cia intelligence. If anything Snowden really proves us the scale of their gathering and capabilities.
- dhimes 8y agoSo that leaves the questions of veracity and motive.
- bilbo0s 8y agoSame motive your local cops have when they leak all kinds of information about this gang banger or that one to the local media in advance of him/her being charged. Increases likelihood of conviction. Of course in this case, there would be no charges, or trials or anything of that nature, but I'd think the same principle is at work. It puts pressure on certain people when they let everyone know that they know. (Along with the not so subtle subtext reminding everyone that their information gathering reach is long, and their memory longer.)
- resters 8y agoThe gathering methods are encompassing and technically adept, but that does not mean that the announcement reflects data that actually exists. Nor does it answer the question of why the agency chose to selectively promote the claim, which is the main issue. We know from many other examples that hard data is used to sell and add credibility to analytical opinions that are at best informed hunches. Yet we are led to believe that the data speaks for itself.
- known 8y agoI'm sure KSA had a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_guy for this episode
- csomar 8y ago> according to a highly classified CIA assessment Shouldn't the CIA know better how to protect its highly classified CIA assessments?
- beginningguava 8y agoThese are the same morons who got dozens of their assets killed because they left their chat completely unsecured to the point it could be found in Google search results. The days of G-men are over, it's a bunch of Ivy league clowns whose daddies couldn't get them a job on wall street. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18376089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18376089 https://newrepublic.com/article/113216/ryan-fogle-cia-spy-arrested-goofy-blond-wig https://newrepublic.com/article/113216/ryan-fogle-cia-spy-ar... Of course in this case it's just the CIA trying to sway the public. Look up Operation Mockingbird and then remember that Anderson Cooper interned with the CIA
- lucaluca1453 8y agoThere's a good chance this came out when it was clear that the administration was never going to allow details to be released. They kept the CIA director from briefing Congress on this assessment. At some point the pressure to correct public falsehoods builds and takes other channels.
- hindsightbias 8y agoI think we have a failure to communicate here. This can all go away with those memorandums of intent turning into real arms deals.
- village-idiot 8y agoThe good thing is that bad actors are often so arrogant that they’re casual about admitting to their crimes on communication devices. The bad thing is that bad actors control militaries.
- giardini 8y agoTo understand the significance of Khashoggi's death you might read the excellent and short Wall Street Journal article: "The Long Struggle for Supremacy in the Muslim World" October 27, 2018 By Yaroslav Trofimov: https://hiiraan.com/news4/2018/Oct/160847/the_long_struggle_for_supremacy_in_the_muslim_world.aspx https://hiiraan.com/news4/2018/Oct/160847/the_long_struggle_... Turks and Saudis have been enemies for centuries. The Khashoggi incident occurred in Turkey but on sovereign Saudi territory (an embassy). The Turks were watching _very_ carefully and apparently had eyes both outside and inside the embassy, an obvious violation of diplomatic protocol. The event has become an opportunity for the Turks to embarrass the Saudis and attempt recapture of the leadership of the Sunni Muslim world from the Saudis.
- onetimemanytime 8y agoBrilliant article. The Ottomans had an empire that lasted over 650 years, any Saudi "state" was no match for them. At one point Ottomans were a major threat to Europe, reaching and almost taking the gates of Vienna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vienna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vienna (Polish knights saved the day and then some!) . The Saudis must've been semi-organized nomads, no match for Ottoman armies. Once, I think the Sultan sent the ruler of Egypt, Ali Pasha, with his mercenaries and truly pwned the Saudis.* But things change, or some think that they changed. Even today, SA army is not even a close match for the Turks, but money talks when it comes to alliances. Personally--call me a bigot--but I think it will SA decades if not generations to have a true modern army, not based on tribal loyalties and BS. Fun Fact: Muhammad Ali Pasha gained control of Egypt in the name of the Sultan as was customary. Wiped out the Mamelukes, after inviting their leaders to a diner (killed by Ali Pasha's soldiers.) https://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/mamelukes-are-massacred-egypt https://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/mamelukes-are... He became so powerful that the Sultan made agreements with him, he was almost no vassal and his family ruled Egypt until 1952. Now the soldiers that made Ali Pasha that great were Albanian mountaineers, that fought not to embarrass themselves and for spoils. Totally undisciplined, uneducated, headstrong and they'd no orders from anyone else but their local area chief. They'd kill a superior for an offense and all soldiers would rally toward the "killer". Eventually they became a threat to Mohamed Ali Pasha's power so he sent them to fight the Wahhabi /Saudis in early 1800's. Two birds with a stone. Here's a typical Albanian mercenary in Egypt http://photobucket.com/gallery/user/Edli82/media/bWVkaWFJZDoxNTAwMjc3OQ==/?ref= http://photobucket.com/gallery/user/Edli82/media/bWVkaWFJZDo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali%27s_seizure_of_power#Al-Bardisi_and_the_Albanians_fall_out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali%27s_seizure_of_po...
- crb002 8y agoBlockade on Saudi oil now helps US oil companies boost profits. The golden rule reigns, those with the gold make the rules.