Earlier in September, British intelligence service (GCHQ) was reported to have planted malware on computer via SlashDot and LinkedIn on the to trace Belgacom’s Engineers. Yesterday, another new revelation surfaced when a PowerPoint slide has been released by Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. According to the document, the American security agency has spread malware computer networks to infiltrate and conduct spy operations. NSA has hacked more than 50,000 computer networks, as per the new PowerPoint slide released by former NSA-employee Edward Snowden and found by the newspaper. In that slide, the document contains a global map that demonstrates that more than 50,000 computer networks mapped as “world-wide implants”. The malware is written to infiltrate those networks to extract sensitive information.
How NSA breaks into computer security?
The management presentation slide dated in 2012 proved that the National Security Agency uses Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) which covered those 50,000 computer networks spotted as hacked by NSA. Computer Network Exploitation is a covert infiltration process in which NSA installs malicious software on the network to steal information they require.
NSA employs hackers?
According to public sources, NSA computer network infiltrations are performed by hackers. A dedicated department of NSA called Tailored Access Operations (TAO) is designated to perform such hacking activities; the department is known to recruit more than one thousands of hackers to conduct this covert cyber operations. Earlier in 2008, NSA had installed about 20,000 implants as revealed by Wall Street Journal. Later, the count of CNE operations went on to become 50,000 and proved increased incidence of such secret malware installation by NSA. As shown in the map, Venezuela and Brazil are the two countries to be highly targeted for such malware install and hacking operations as the chances of being detected in those countries are slim. Once implanted, the malware is controlled remotely, to turn on and off. Moreover, the malware or the “sleeper cells” can be simply activated with just a push of a button.
