NSA Plan: Pretend To Be Facebook To Spread Malware To Millions

The week before last, Internet
security expert Morgan Marquis-Boire warned about the threat of
state sponsored surveillance and malware at a human rights
conference. Marquis-Boire described how,
among other tactics, oppressive regimes like Syria’s create
websites mimicking Facebook to lure in dissidents. Once a dissident
has typed in his email address and password, the government can
infiltrate his real account, deliver malware, spy, and blackmail
him, his family, his friends, and his entire network.

Members of our own government may wiretap us, fly surveillance
drones over our houses, and even spy on each other, but certainly,
they would not use the exact same tactics as murderous despots in
war-torn countries.

…Right?

Of course they would. This week, Glenn Greenwald and Ryan
Gallagher at The Intercept released another batch of
classified files from whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s seemingly
bottomless pit of National Security Agency (NSA) spookiness:

In some cases the NSA has masqueraded as a fake Facebook server,
using the social media site as a launching pad to infect a target’s
computer and exfiltrate files from a hard drive. In others, it has
sent out spam emails laced with the malware, which can be tailored
to covertly record audio from a computer’s microphone and take
snapshots with its webcam. The hacking systems have also enabled
the NSA to launch cyberattacks by corrupting and disrupting file
downloads or denying access to websites.

The “groundbreaking surveillance technology the agency has
developed [could] infect potentially millions of computers
worldwide,” according to The
Intercept. Read the full details

here.

NSA officials denied Greenwald’s claims,
according to USA Today, calling them “inaccurate.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was not pleased to find out that
the NSA has been doing the web version of wearing a Halloween mask
with his likeness while breaking into people’s houses. So,
yesterday Zuckerberg did what we all do when we’re angry: he posted
a fuming status about it on Facebook,
writing that he’s “so confused and frustrated by… the
behavior of the US government,” demanded that it “be the champion
for the internet, not a threat.” Zuckerberg did something else most
of us can’t do, too. He called President Obama, but still came away
with the sense that “it will take a very long time for true full
reform.”