{"id":2616,"date":"2014-12-07T17:32:44","date_gmt":"2014-12-07T22:32:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=2616"},"modified":"2014-12-07T17:32:44","modified_gmt":"2014-12-07T22:32:44","slug":"operation-auroragold-how-the-nsa-hacks-cellphone-networks-worldwide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=2616","title":{"rendered":"Operation AURORAGOLD: How the NSA Hacks Cellphone Networks Worldwide"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/firstlook.org\/theintercept\/2014\/12\/04\/nsa-auroragold-hack-cellphones\/\">Operation AURORAGOLD: How the NSA Hacks Cellphone Networks Worldwide<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px 0px;\">In March 2011, two weeks before the Western intervention in Libya, a secret message was delivered to the National Security Agency. An intelligence unit within the U.S. military\u2019s Africa Command needed help to hack into Libya\u2019s cellphone networks and monitor text messages.<\/p>\n<p style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px 0px;\">For the NSA, the task was easy. The agency had already obtained technical information about the cellphone carriers\u2019 internal systems by spying on documents sent among company employees, and these details would provide the perfect blueprint to help the military break into the networks.<\/p>\n<p style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px 0px;\">The NSA\u2019s assistance in the Libya operation, however, was not an isolated case. It was part of a much larger surveillance program\u2014global in its scope and ramifications\u2014targeted not just at hostile countries.<\/p>\n<p style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px 0px;\">According to\u00a0<a style=\"box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; color: #df3f3d; text-decoration: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;\" href=\"https:\/\/firstlook.org\/theintercept\/documents\/\">documents<\/a>\u00a0contained in the archive of material provided to<em style=\"box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;\">The Intercept<\/em>\u00a0by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the NSA has spied on hundreds of companies and organizations internationally, including in countries closely allied to the United States, in an effort to find security weaknesses in cellphone technology that it can exploit for surveillance.<\/p>\n<p style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px 0px;\">The documents also reveal how the NSA plans to secretly introduce new flaws into communication systems so that they can be tapped into\u2014a controversial tactic that security experts say could be exposing the general population to criminal hackers.<\/p>\n<p style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px 0px;\">Codenamed AURORAGOLD, the covert operation has monitored the content of messages sent and received by more than 1,200 email accounts associated with major cellphone network operators, intercepting confidential company planning papers that help the NSA hack into phone networks.<\/p>\n<p style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 28px 0px;\">&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Operation AURORAGOLD: How the NSA Hacks Cellphone Networks Worldwide. In March 2011, two weeks before the Western intervention in Libya, a secret message was delivered to the National Security Agency. An intelligence unit within the U.S. military\u2019s Africa Command needed help to hack into Libya\u2019s cellphone networks and monitor text messages. For the NSA, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1738,1739,249,484,577],"class_list":["post-2616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-auroragold","tag-cellphone-networks","tag-edward-snowden","tag-libya","tag-nsa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2616"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2617,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616\/revisions\/2617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}