Spotlight: Snowden files unveil U.S. attempt to control Internet

The world-shocking global surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) is just the beginning of the spook organization's sprawling efforts to control the Internet, show new revelations attributed to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The NSA is "planning for wars of the future in which the Internet will play a critical role" and seeking the ability to destroy enemy infrastructure remotely, German magazine Der Spiegel revealed in a recent report, citing "top-secret documents" from Snowden's archive it has seen exclusively.

POLITERAIN, NOT SO POLITE

The Spiegel disclosure highlighted an NSA project code-named "Politerain," which is operated by digital snipers with Tailored Access Operations, the department responsible for breaking into computers.

In its job posting, the program says it is "looking for interns who want to break things."

On the basis of hacking into third-party computers, interns are also told to formulate plans to "remotely degrade or destroy opponent computers, routers, servers and network-enabled devices by attacking the hardware."

Politerain spies, according to the leaked documents, have various programs for specific purposes. For example, Passionatepolka can be used to "remotely brick network cards," Berserkr to implant "persistent backdoors" and "parasitic drivers," and Barnfire to "erase the BIOS on a brand of servers that act as a backbone to many rival governments."

Ultimately, the goal of the internship program was "developing an attacker's mindset," noted the German magazine.

SPYING IS JUST "PHASE 0"

Internal NSA documents, Der Spiegel said, indicate that surveillance of the Internet is merely "Phase 0" in the U.S. digital war strategy.

The aim of the surveillance is to detect vulnerabilities in enemy systems, which is "the prerequisite for everything that follows," the German magazine added, citing the files.

Once "stealthy implants" have been placed to infiltrate enemy systems, thus allowing "permanent accesses," then Phase 3 has been achieved -- a phase headed by the word "dominate" in the documents.

At that stage, according to the report, NSA spooks can control and destroy "at will through pre-positioned accesses" critical systems and networks, which include anything important in keeping a society running: energy, communications and transportation.

"The internal documents state that the ultimate goal is 'real-time controlled escalation,'" said the Spiegel report.

D WEAPONS

Atomic, biological and chemical weapons are widely referred to as the ABC weapons. Now the list has been extended to D -- digital weapons.

"The next major conflict will start in cyberspace," Der Spiegel quoted one NSA presentation as saying. To that end, the U.S. government is currently undertaking a massive effort to digitally arm itself for network warfare.

"For the 2013 secret intelligence budget, the NSA projected it would need around 1 billion dollars in order to increase the strength of its computer network attack operations. The budget included an increase of some 32 million dollars for 'unconventional solutions' alone," revealed the report.

The NSA aims "to use the Net to paralyze computer networks and, by doing so, potentially all the infrastructure they control, including power and water supplies, factories, airports or the flow of money," according to the Spiegel disclosure.

Among the D weapons is malware, and several programs of that sort have emerged in recent years that a number of indicators show are attributable to the NSA and its Five Eyes alliance, which also includes Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The Spiegel report referred to Stuxnet, which was used to attack the Iranian nuclear program, and Regin, "a powerful spyware trojan that created a furor in Germany after it infected the USB stick of a high-ranking staffer to Chancellor Angela Merkel." The latter was also used in attacks against the European Commission.

PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY

In what is called a guerilla war over data, the Snowden files show, little differentiation is made between soldiers and civilians, and any Internet user could suffer damage to his or her data or computer.

The potential damage D weapons can inflict goes well beyond the online world. For example, if U.S. spies use Barnfire to destroy or "brick" the control center of a hospital, "people who do not even own a mobile phone could be affected," Der Spiegel noted.

While launching cyber-attacks, intelligence agencies like the NSA have adopted "plausible deniability" as their guiding principle, seeking to make it impossible to trace the sources of the attackers, the German magazine added.

"It's a stunning approach with which the digital spies deliberately undermine the very foundations of the rule of law around the globe," commented the magazine.

"This approach threatens to transform the Internet into a lawless zone in which superpowers and their secret services operate according to their own whims with very few ways to hold them accountable for their actions," it added. Endi