cia

Spies on the cloud? Amazon said working with CIA

Here's a fun one: The folks over at Federal Computer Week got their hands on a hot rumor about Amazon supposedly building a cloud service for the spooks over at the Central Intelligence Agency, a project estimated to be "worth up to $600 million over 10 years."

Amazon Web Services will help the intelligence agency build a private cloud infrastructure that helps the agency keep up with emerging technologies like big data in a cost-effective manner not possible under the CIA's previous cloud efforts, sources told FCW.

Given how Amazon usually considers everything -- including the … Read more

Homeland Security: Let's be clear about aerial drone privacy

A Homeland Security office says it plans to review the privacy implications of using drones to monitor U.S. citizens.

The department's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties has created a working group that will "clarify any misunderstandings that exist" about DHS's drone program, as well as make an effort to "mitigate and address any outstanding" privacy concerns.

Tamara Kessler from DHS's civil rights office and Jonathan Cantor, DHS acting chief privacy officer, sent the memo (PDF) describing the review to Secretary Janet Napolitano last September. It was released this week.

It … Read more

Cold War secrets: Spy satellite photos lost at sea, then saved

In 1971, the KH-9 Hexagon was the United States' most advanced spy device -- a brand-new photographic reconnaissance satellite as large as a school bus and carrying more than 60 miles of high-resolution photographic film for surveillance missions.

The 6-inch wide Hexagon film frame captured a field of view of about 370 miles, with a resolution of about 2 to 3 feet, according to the National Reconnaissance Office.

Before today's digital technology, the film images were sent back to Earth in recoverable return capsules. Having entered the Earth's atmosphere, the canisters deployed a parachute, and were then snagged … Read more

U-2 spy plane pilot Powers honored with Silver Star

Capt. Francis Gary Powers, the Air Force pilot whose U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, was posthumously honored Friday in a medal ceremony at the Pentagon.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton A. Schwartz presented the Silver Star Medal to Capt. Powers' children, Gary Powers Jr. and Dee Powers, in the Hall of Heroes, in tribute to Powers' "heroic action and his loyalty to the United States of America during a pivotal time in our nation's history."

"My sister, myself, my wife, my son, aunts and uncles, cousins, the … Read more

'60 Minutes' profiles threat posed by Stuxnet

Stuxnet took the world by storm two years ago.

The worm was different from previous viruses: it wasn't designed to steal money, identities, or passwords. Instead, the malware targeted the controls at industrial facilities such as power plants, inspiring talk of a top secret, government-sponsored cyberwar.

At the time of its discovery in June 2010, the assumption was that espionage lay behind the effort, but subsequent analysis uncovered the ability of the malware to control plant operations outright--specifically an Iranian nuclear facility.

In addition to showing that a cyberattack could cause significant physical damage to a facility, it also … Read more

CIA said to be planning new software acquisition strategy

The Central Intelligence Agency is changing how it buys software, according to a new report.

The agency's top technology decision-maker, Ira "Gus" Hunt, told software vendors yesterday that it's transitioning to a pay-as-you-go purchasing model, according to Reuters. Previously, the CIA entered into licensing agreements with vendors, like SAP and Oracle, to acquire new software.

The move might not make those companies too happy, since they currently have the CIA locked into deals that competitors can't encroach on. With its new policy, however, the CIA has the ability to get what it wants, when it … Read more

Anonymous invites CIA, others to its weekend party

Anonymous is having a busy weekend.

The loose-knit hacking collective, which last week scored a coup against the FBI, claimed yesterday to have taken down the CIA's Web site, in what appeared to be a distributed denial of service attack (one of the group's specialties, such relatively unsophisticated attacks paralyze Web servers with waves of data requests).

The group also posted information it said was pilfered from police and government servers in Alabama, and, as blog RT reported, took down the Mexican Senate and Interior Ministry Web sites. It also said it had exposed e-mail addresses from the … Read more

Hackers hit CIA, UN Web sites

The CIA's Web site was down Friday afternoon in what looked like a distributed denial-of-service attack publicized by members of the online activist group Anonymous.

With the CIA site inaccessible, the Twitter account for @YourAnonNews tweeted "CIA TANGO DOWN: cia.gov #Anonymous" and included a link to a news story about the outage on Russian site RT.com.

A CIA representative declined to comment on the matter to CBS News beyond offering this statement: "We are looking into these reports."

The site was back online Saturday.

The Anonymous account also posted on Friday a Pastebin … Read more

CIA's 'vengeful librarians' track Twitter, Facebook

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has established a compound in Virginia that focuses on one very important aspect of international espionage: social network spying.

According to the Associated Press, which was provided some insight into the CIA's operations, the Open Source Center, a team also known as the "vengeful librarians," analyzes up to 5 million tweets a day to gauge public opinion around the world. The group also examines messages shared via Facebook and comments made in Internet chat rooms, in addition to listening in on more traditional forms of information dissemination, such as TV news channels … Read more