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NSA Sent Coded Messages From Its Twitter To Communicate With Foreign Spies (gizmodo.com) 108

Posted by BeauHD from the not-so-secret-after-all dept.
Matt Novak reports via Gizmodo: During the first Cold War, American and British spies would sometimes place coded messages in newspaper classified ads to communicate with each other. And according to new reports in the New York Times and The Intercept, the National Security Agency (NSA) has updated the tactic, using its public Twitter account to send secret messages to at least one Russian spy. That's just one relatively small detail in much more salacious articles about NSA and CIA agents traveling to Germany in an effort to recover cyberweapons that had been stolen from U.S. intelligence agencies. A Russian spy allegedly offered up the stolen cyber tools to the Americans in exchange for $10 million, eventually lowering his price to just $1 million. The Russian spy allegedly claimed to even have dirt on President Trump.

According to the reports, the unnamed Russian met with U.S. spies in person in Germany, and the NSA sometimes communicated with the Russian spy by sending roughly a dozen coded messages from the NSA's Twitter account. The one important question: Were the messages sent via direct message or were they sent out as public tweets? The New York Times report leaves some ambiguity, but according to James Risen in The Intercept they were very public.
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NSA Sent Coded Messages From Its Twitter To Communicate With Foreign Spies More

NSA Sent Coded Messages From Its Twitter To Communicate With Foreign Spies

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  • Meh. (Score:5, Informative)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Saturday February 10, 2018 @07:47PM (#56102035)

    The Russian spy allegedly claimed to even have dirt on President Trump.

    Who doesn't?

    • The got it off of CNN, USAtoday, MSNBC, Fox News, etc.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by msauve ( 701917 )
      Trump needing to fit code words in proper order into his tweets would explain a lot.

      • Re:Meh. (Score:5, Funny)

        by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Saturday February 10, 2018 @09:46PM (#56102503)

        Trump needing to fit code words in proper order into his tweets would explain a lot.

        Certainly would settle the debate about: covfefe

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          Actually communication directly via twitter makes no sense what so ever, defiantly no spy vs spy. What you do is encrypt the message going from other people to other people and just listen in. So not from 1st party to 2nd party but from 3rd party to 4th party and in return from 5th party to 6th party and you just listen in. You read from listening in and you send via the 3rd and 5th parties, who a pretty secure because they do nothing and it is just a temporary contact with you, say at a regularised locatio

    • Covfefe!

  • Odd... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Frosty Piss ( 770223 ) * on Saturday February 10, 2018 @07:50PM (#56102049)

    I'm not surprised that Twitter / Facebook and so on are used like this, the Bot Nets have been using them for Command and Control for ages. But why use the "official" NSA Twitter Twaddle? It's pedestrian to discover who accesses specific sites... Why not something more benign like Britney Speers Twitter?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megane ( 129182 )
      ...or Bayesian junk messages on Slashdot? Why would someone still be posting that crap for well over a decade when hardly anyone even notices it?
    • I'd imagine that people presenting themselves as "CIA operatives" could confirm that by having the official CIA twitter broadcast some pre-specified message.

    • I'm not surprised that Twitter / Facebook and so on are used like this, the Bot Nets have been using them for Command and Control for ages. But why use the "official" NSA Twitter Twaddle? It's pedestrian to discover who accesses specific sites... Why not something more benign like Britney Speers Twitter?

      Because it's the official NSA Twitter account.

      Think about it from the Russian's perspective, are you talking to some low level spy who doesn't actually have the authority to send the money you're after? An ex-spook like Steele? A Russian counter-intelligence operative?

      An official NSA tweet tells you that a very powerful person at the agency is backing the operation. That it's important enough that they're willing to screw with their Twitter account. And you're still relatively indistinguishable from all the

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        That works until a human spy well placed in the USA starts seeing the results of such missions and has worked their what up to clearance access to the "how" of contractor social media communications.
        Then the other nation just has to watch for everyone interesting in their own nation reading the "official" US gov social media.
        Plant a few must have, top secret new fake project names and see what the USA gets as results.
        A short list of information given to the USA and who has such gov project access in the

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The NSA and GCHQ think people working for the USA who will be reading such messages will not be tracked in their own nations due to lack of "collect it all" skill in other nations.
      Other nations just see their population are using social media all day, everyday.
      That other nations fail to have the granulated per account real time collection to show a person visited a section of social media.
      That other nations can only bait and trap their citizens on social media over time with fake accounts not log all soc

  • Classified (Score:3)

    by devnullkac ( 223246 ) on Saturday February 10, 2018 @07:50PM (#56102055) Homepage

    During the first Cold War, American and British spies would sometimes place coded messages in newspaper classified ads to communicate with each other.

    Turns out that's the origin of the word "classified" for secret documents. Lol.

  • To all our friends on Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mister Liberty ( 769145 ) on Saturday February 10, 2018 @08:14PM (#56102135)
    Peace of mind comes without Twitter.
    I repeat: Peace of mind comes without Twitter..
  • They're just giving instructions to the French Resistance. Vive la France.

  • Biased political bullshit from the CIA (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The "cyberweapons" is a bullshit cover story.

    NSA and CIA agents traveling to Germany in an effort to recover cyberweapons that had been stolen from U.S. intelligence agencies. A Russian spy allegedly offered up the stolen cyber tools to the Americans in exchange for $10 million, eventually lowering his price to just $1 million. The Russian spy allegedly claimed to even have dirt on President Trump.

    Why would you pay anything for a copy of "stolen cyber tools"?!?!?! The Russians aren't about to give the CIA their last copy no matter how they're paid, and the NSA and the CIA already have them and don't need another copy.

    After the transaction, the CIA gets a disk of "stolen cyber tools" that they already have, and the Russian still have them too.

    So it's a bullshit cover story.

    So what did the CIA pay for?

    This was the CIA trying to get dirt on Trump - no more,

    • Re:Biased political bullshit from the CIA (Score:5, Interesting)

      by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Saturday February 10, 2018 @10:12PM (#56102597)

      The "cyberweapons" is a bullshit cover story.

      NSA and CIA agents traveling to Germany in an effort to recover cyberweapons that had been stolen from U.S. intelligence agencies. A Russian spy allegedly offered up the stolen cyber tools to the Americans in exchange for $10 million, eventually lowering his price to just $1 million. The Russian spy allegedly claimed to even have dirt on President Trump.

      Why would you pay anything for a copy of "stolen cyber tools"?!?!?! The Russians aren't about to give the CIA their last copy no matter how they're paid, and the NSA and the CIA already have them and don't need another copy.

      Even if you think the NSA should offer patches for every bug they found the NSA doesn't agree.

      If the NSA knows exactly what was stolen that does 3 things for them.
      1) They know which tools are now useless (or if they work you might have hacked a honeypot).
      2) The more you know about what was stolen the easier to figure out who stole it and how they did it.
      3) You know which vulnerabilities you need to patch.

      This was the CIA trying to get dirt on Trump - no more, no less.

      According to the article the CIA was against the investigation because the head of the CIA is a Trump loyalist who didn't want dirt on the President. I wouldn't be surprised if the CIA was the source of the leak for this story.

  • This is getting unusual: the New York Times paper is not obviously anti-russian.

  • Of course they're public. (Score:5, Informative)

    by BitterOak ( 537666 ) on Saturday February 10, 2018 @09:23PM (#56102391)

    The one important question: Were the messages sent via direct message or were they sent out as public tweets? The New York Times report leaves some ambiguity, but according to James Risen in The Intercept they were very public.

    Of course they're public. The whole point is that no one can see who is receiving the messages. They're coded, of course, so only the intended recipient will know what they mean, but possibly even the sender doesn't know who that person is. If DMs were used, that would entirely defeat the purpose: might as well use a secure communications app. The points of classified ads in the past, or tweets today, is that they can be read anonymously, even from a public computer terminal without typing in any login credentials.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mentil ( 1748130 )

      The points of classified ads in the past, or tweets today, is that they can be read anonymously, even from a public computer terminal

      Publicly pulling out the spool of silk OTP encodings, and then burning it, is slightly suspicious, however.

      • The points of classified ads in the past, or tweets today, is that they can be read anonymously, even from a public computer terminal

        Publicly pulling out the spool of silk OTP encodings, and then burning it, is slightly suspicious, however.

        Just write down the tweet, or photograph it, then do your OTP decoding at home.

  • Coded Message (Score:4, Funny)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Saturday February 10, 2018 @10:02PM (#56102559) Journal

    I-ay, avehay the irtday on umptray! Eepay apetay!

    • I-ay, avehay the irtday on umptray! Eepay apetay!

      I just realized that this hasn't been modded down because Russian trolls don't understand Pig Latin.

  • Sigh. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Sunday February 11, 2018 @07:23AM (#56103579) Homepage

    If they're coded messages, it literally doesn't matter.

    In fact, that's kind of the point of encrypted and coding - people can read your message AND STILL not understand what it says.

    Sending as direct message would link the two parties conclusively. Putting a public message doesn't - literally anyone who viewed it could have been the intended recipient and there's no way to tell who it was.

    Stupid headline/summary/article is stupid.

    Any agency that wanted to get a message to an agent who can't reveal themselves would often find the best way to do so would be to publicly broadcast a coded message using a system that only that agent has the facility / knowledge / key to understand.

    Everything from numbers stations, to messages in newspapers, to Twitter... it's the right way to do it without revealing the message, or the intended recipient.

    Encrypt the message. Don't try to obfuscate/obscure the medium. Anything radio can be captured, anything visible can be photographed, anything written can be intercepted, anything electronic can be sniffed, anything audible canbe recorded. Pretty much the entire basis of things like TLS, SSH, etc. - who cares if the underlying medium is secure... form a secure channel over it using methods that EXPECT it to be actively monitored by an enemy (e.g. Diffie-Hellman, etc.).

  • in Pyongyang today.

  • ...pays money to "buy back" stolen hacking tools. The cover story is obviously a lie.

  • Humint (Score:2)

    by JBMcB ( 73720 )

    Since when does the NSA run human intelligence operations? I guess when your budget is classified you can just do whatever the hell you want.

  • Spies use all kinds of things to pass coded messages. Should we really splash examples all over the media? I don't see any benefit, just potential harm.
  • Anybody here know that during WWII the Allies sent coded messages via BBC radio broadcasts? This is not rocket surgery boys & girls. Sending via a tweet hides the possible recipients & is probably why the Intercept is upset, Putin does not know who the mole is.
  • So, what to they use for DOMESTIC spies?
  • covfefe : Dude, call me. I've got the stuff.

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