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This leak may be the most significant from Snowden yet. As the article notes, until 2007 even the total amount of the budget was considered a secret. There's no

This leak may be the most significant from Snowden yet. As the article notes, until 2007 even the total amount of the budget was considered a secret. There's no precedent for American journalists having access to all this detail on our intelligence spending. I wish the article had more detail on "offensive cyber operations". AFAIK there's very little known in public about US active cyberwarfare.

fossuser 13y ago
We do know a lot about stuxnet - I would guess that's one of the major ones. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ord...
- yk 13y ago
  And Flame [1] and Duqu [2]. There is of course a lot of technical discussion, but not much about the organizational side of things. So we do not know for example, how the NSA obtains 0days. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_%28malware%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_%28malware%29 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duqu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duqu
  - milkshakes 13y ago
    Endgame Systems https://media.blackhat.com/us-13/US-13-Hanif-Binarypig-Scalable-Malware-Analytics-in-Hadoop-Slides.pdf https://media.blackhat.com/us-13/US-13-Hanif-Binarypig-Scala...
- ajross 13y ago
  It's hard to believe a simple worm (an exercise in pure software development) would qualify as a "major operation" in the context of the article, which is talking about budget. Surely Stuxnet was better funded than script kiddie IRC hacks, but it's not a fundamentally different task -- just throw a team of smart hackers at it.
joe_the_user 13y ago
The CIA and NSA have launched aggressive new efforts to hack into foreign computer networks to steal information or sabotage enemy systems, embracing what the budget refers to as “offensive cyber operations.” We'd noticed but making unofficially official is indeed a significant step, especially given that it kind of blunts the complaints about Chinese offensive operations. Indeed, one might imagine that a year ago, an NSA official might get a "top of the world" feeling from both mobilizing major offensive capability and getting the propaganda victory of appearing to be on the defensive from Chinese attacks.

fossuser 13y ago

We do know a lot about stuxnet - I would guess that's one of the major ones. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ord...

yk 13y ago
And Flame [1] and Duqu [2]. There is of course a lot of technical discussion, but not much about the organizational side of things. So we do not know for example, how the NSA obtains 0days. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_%28malware%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_%28malware%29 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duqu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duqu
- milkshakes 13y ago
  Endgame Systems https://media.blackhat.com/us-13/US-13-Hanif-Binarypig-Scalable-Malware-Analytics-in-Hadoop-Slides.pdf https://media.blackhat.com/us-13/US-13-Hanif-Binarypig-Scala...
ajross 13y ago
It's hard to believe a simple worm (an exercise in pure software development) would qualify as a "major operation" in the context of the article, which is talking about budget. Surely Stuxnet was better funded than script kiddie IRC hacks, but it's not a fundamentally different task -- just throw a team of smart hackers at it.

joe_the_user 13y ago

The CIA and NSA have launched aggressive new efforts to hack into foreign computer networks to steal information or sabotage enemy systems, embracing what the budget refers to as “offensive cyber operations.” We'd noticed but making unofficially official is indeed a significant step, especially given that it kind of blunts the complaints about Chinese offensive operations. Indeed, one might imagine that a year ago, an NSA official might get a "top of the world" feeling from both mobilizing major offensive capability and getting the propaganda victory of appearing to be on the defensive from Chinese attacks.