[governance] FW: Britain's GCHQ Hacked Belgian Telecoms Firm

[michael gurstein]

From: sid-l at googlegroups.com [mailto:sid-l at googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of
Sid Shniad
Sent: Saturday, September 21, 2013 4:34 PM
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Subject: Britain's GCHQ Hacked Belgian Telecoms Firm

 

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/british-spy-agency-gchq-hacked-be
lgian-telecoms-firm-a-923406.html

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09/20/2013 


Britain's GCHQ Hacked Belgian Telecoms Firm


A cyber attack on Belgacom raised considerable attention last week.
Documents leaked by Edward Snowden and seen by SPIEGEL indicate that
Britain's GCHQ intelligence agency was responsible for the attack.

Documents from the archive of whistleblower Edward Snowden indicate that
Britain's GCHQ intelligence service was behind a cyber attack against
Belgacom, a partly state-owned Belgian telecoms company. A "top secret"
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) presentation seen by SPIEGEL
indicate that the goal of project, conducted under the codename "Operation
Socialist," was "to enable better exploitation of Belgacom" and to improve
understanding of the provider's infrastructure.

The presentation is undated, but another document indicates that access has
been possible since 2010. The document shows that the Belgacom subsidiary
Bics, a joint venture between Swisscom and South Africa's MTN, was on the
radar of the British spies.

Belgacom, whose major customers include institutions like the European
Commission, the European Council and the European Parliament, ordered an
internal investigation following the recent revelations about spying by the
United States' National Security Agency (NSA) and determined it had been the
subject of an attack. The company then referred the incident to Belgian
prosecutors. Last week, Belgian Prime Minister Elio di Rupo spoke of a
"violation of the public firm's integrity." 

When news first emerged of the cyber attack, suspicions in Belgium were
initially directed at the NSA. But the presentation suggests that it was
Belgium's own European Union partner Britain that is behind "Operation
Socialist," even though the presentation indicates that the British used
spying technology for the operation that the NSA had developed. 

According to the slides in the GCHQ presentation, the attack was directed at
several Belgacom employees and involved the planting of a highly developed
attack technology referred to as a "Quantum Insert" ("QI"). It appears to be
a method with which the person being targeted, without their knowledge, is
redirected to websites that then plant malware on their computers that can
then manipulate them. Some of the employees whose computers were infiltrated
had "good access" to important parts of Belgacom's infrastructure, and this
seemed to please the British spies, according to the slides. 

The documents also suggest that GCHQ continued to probe the areas of
infrastructure to which the targeted employees had access. The undated
presentation states that they were on the verge of accessing the Belgians'
central roaming router. The router is used to process international traffic.
According to the presentation, the British wanted to use this access for
complex attacks ("Man in the Middle" attacks) on smartphone users. The head
of GCHQ's Network Analysis Centre (NAC) described Operation Socialist in the
presentation as a "success." 

When contacted by SPIEGEL reporters, GCHQ provided no comment.

 

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