The NSA Trained Edward Snowden To Be An Elite Hacker

[think]

Source: Business Insider

Michael Kelley Jul. 5, 2013, 8:54 AM

In 2010 the National Security Agency (NSA) taught Edward Snowden how to turn the world's largest spy agency inside out.

Snowden, through a NSA course that trains security professionals to think like hackers, acquired the skills he needed to quietly slip into NSA computer systems and gather the highly classified surveillance documents he leaked last month, Christopher Drew and Scott Shane of the New York Times report.

Snowden told the South China Morning Post that he took he got a job as an “infrastructure analyst” at Booz Allen to get "access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked."


Read more: http://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/nsa-trained-edward-snowden-elite-124901047.html

[Arctic Dave]

1. Whoa!

Now I'm really getting interested.

[dipsydoodle]

2. Might be best

to revise link to : http://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/nsa-trained-edward-snowden-elite-124901047.html Direct Business Insider links here often get locked.

[think]

3. Thank you. Changing link

I appreciate the heads up.

[dipsydoodle]

4. You're welcome

Not sure why but occasionally that's' not recognised a being a major news source.

[leveymg]

5. Gives new meaning to the term, "ethical hacker". From the NYT article:

Résumé Shows Snowden Honed Hacking Skills
By CHRISTOPHER DREW and SCOTT SHANE
Published: July 4, 2013


In 2010, while working for a National Security Agency contractor, Edward J. Snowden learned to be a hacker.
He took a course that trains security professionals to think like hackers and understand their techniques, all with the intent of turning out “certified ethical hackers” who can better defend their employers’ networks.

But the certification, listed on a résumé that Mr. Snowden later prepared, would also have given him some of the skills he needed to rummage undetected through N.S.A. computer systems and gather the highly classified surveillance documents that he leaked last month, security experts say.

Mr. Snowden’s résumé, which has not been made public and was described by people who have seen it, provides a new picture of how his skills and responsibilities expanded while he worked as an intelligence contractor. Although federal officials offered only a vague description of him as a “systems administrator,” the résumé suggests that he had transformed himself into the kind of cybersecurity expert the N.S.A. is desperate to recruit, making his decision to release the documents even more embarrassing to the agency. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/us/resume-shows-snowden-honed-hacking-skills.html

“If he’s looking inside U.S. government networks for foreign intrusions, he might have very broad access,” said James A. Lewis, a computer security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The hacker got into the storeroom.”

[denem]

6. "Cyber Counterintelligence" - Snowden's actual Job Description.

How perfect is that. Anything he did, sophisticated hacking to emails would all look like he was doing his job.

Tell me this guy was shocked about the NSA's operations, again.

[KoKo]

7. This from the NYT article linked here has an interesting quote:

NYT:

In an age when terabytes of data can be stashed inside palm-size devices, the new details about Mr. Snowden’s training and assignments underscore the challenges that the N.S.A. faces in recruiting a new generation of free-spirited computer experts with diverse political views.

Sounds like they would prefer to hire narrow minded computer experts with particular partisan political views." Not such a good idea and probably wouldn't work given that "free spirited" would seem to be the reason someone would get involved in computer "hacking" in the first place.

[Major Hogwash]

8. Just a hacker!!!!

This will look good on his resume.

[think]

9. Apparently it did...

[Major Hogwash]

10. This ain't over yet.

It's only a matter of time now.

[think]

11. Thought is was a matter of the NSA violating laws and spying on people

and a hacker working indirectly for the Carlyle Group having access to information so important that they needed to piss off South America to prove they were serious about getting this leaker who hasn't revealed anything important.....

But it could just be a matter of time...

[Dustlawyer]

12. They do not know the genie they let out of the bottle! This kind of power is too irresistible

and they do not know where it leads. Just because you can do a thing does not mean that you should!

[gvstn]

13. I'd take this article with a grain of salt

In the first few days of this whole thing someone dug up some of Snowden's posts on a message board (I don't think it was Reddit, perhaps Ars Technica?). Anyway, he had quite a long post about how to get tech jobs by padding your resume. This was when he was around 22 years old. He had lots of questionable suggestions. I can't remember specifics but it would be on the lines of taking a two day seminar on some topic and then stating on your resume that you were certified in that field. Yes, technically you could be handed a xeroxed "certification" after you put your 10 hours in but it hardly makes you an expert. He had lots of ideas like that. That the NYT is stating that he took a "course" at the NSA's expense and now he is an expert hacker sounds a lot like the way he suggested padding one's resume. I think the NYT may be exaggerating this story.