{"id":31114,"date":"2018-02-17T08:16:40","date_gmt":"2018-02-17T13:16:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=31114"},"modified":"2018-02-17T08:30:41","modified_gmt":"2018-02-17T13:30:41","slug":"how-uk-spies-hacked-a-european-ally-and-got-away-with-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=31114","title":{"rendered":"How UK Spies Hacked a European Ally and Got Away With It"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo: Sander de Wilde\/Corbis\/Getty Images<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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HOW UK SPIES HACKED A EUROPEAN ALLY AND GOT AWAY WITH IT<\/a><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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FOR A MOMENT,<\/u> it seemed the hackers had slipped up and exposed their identities. It was the summer of 2013, and European investigators were looking into an unprecedented breach of Belgium\u2019s telecommunications infrastructure. They believed they were on the trail of the people responsible. But it would soon become clear that they were chasing ghosts \u2013 fake names that had been invented by British spies.<\/p>\n

The hack had targeted Belgacom, Belgium\u2019s largest telecommunications provider, which serves millions of people across Europe. The company\u2019s employees had noticed their email accounts were not receiving messages. On closer inspection, they made a startling discovery: Belgacom\u2019s internal computer systems had been infected with one of the most advanced pieces of malware security experts had ever seen.<\/p>\n

As The Intercept reported<\/a> in 2014, the hack turned out to have been perpetrated by U.K. surveillance agency Government Communications Headquarters, better known as GCHQ. The British spies hacked into Belgacom employees\u2019 computers and then penetrated the company\u2019s internal systems. In an eavesdropping mission called \u201cOperation Socialist,\u201d GCHQ planted bugs inside the most sensitive parts of Belgacom\u2019s networks and tapped into communications processed by the company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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GCHQ Computer Network Exploitation presentation<\/span>22 pages<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The covert operation was the first known example of a European Union member state hacking the critical infrastructure of another. The malware infection triggered a massive cleanup operation within Belgacom, which has since renamed itself Proximus. The company \u2013 of which the Belgian government is the majority owner \u2013 was forced to replace thousands of its computers at a cost of several million Euros. Elio di Rupo, Belgium\u2019s then-prime minister, was furious, calling the hack a \u201cviolation.\u201d Meanwhile, one of the country\u2019s top federal prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into the intrusion.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo: Sander de Wilde\/Corbis\/Getty Images HOW UK SPIES HACKED A EUROPEAN ALLY AND GOT AWAY WITH IT FOR A MOMENT, it seemed the hackers had slipped up and exposed their identities. It was the summer of 2013, and European investigators were looking into an unprecedented breach of Belgium\u2019s telecommunications infrastructure. They believed they were on […]<\/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":[5],"tags":[18629,1957,18628,13062,281,284,1511,2148,1401,15668,5567,820,2080],"class_list":["post-31114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-belgamcom","tag-belgium","tag-belgium-telecommunications","tag-cyber-security","tag-europe","tag-european-union","tag-gchq","tag-hacking","tag-malware","tag-ryan-gallagher","tag-the-intercept","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31114","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=31114"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31117,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31114\/revisions\/31117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}