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114-676: The Director of the National Security Agency ( DIRNSA ) is the highest-ranking official of the National Security Agency , which is a defense agency within the U.S. Department of Defense . The director of the NSA also concurrently serves as the chief of the Central Security Service (CHCSS) and as the commander of U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM). As the director of the NSA and the chief of

228-576: A zero-day attack , exploiting a weakness in the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser, the malware used being a modification of the trojan "Hydraq". Concerned about the possibility of hackers taking advantage of this previously unknown weakness in Internet Explorer, the governments of Germany and, subsequently France, issued warnings not to use the browser. There was speculation that "insiders" had been involved in

342-405: A "patsy", an insider can be induced, willingly or under duress, to provide information. A patsy may be initially asked to hand over inconsequential information and, once compromised by committing a crime, blackmailed into handing over more sensitive material. Individuals may leave one company to take up employment with another and take sensitive information with them. Such apparent behavior has been

456-636: A "privacy mechanism"; surveillance was stored encrypted; decryption required a warrant. The research done under this program may have contributed to the technology used in later systems. ThinThread was canceled when Michael Hayden chose Trailblazer , which did not include ThinThread's privacy system. Trailblazer Project ramped up in 2002 and was worked on by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Boeing , Computer Sciences Corporation , IBM , and Litton Industries . Some NSA whistleblowers complained internally about major problems surrounding Trailblazer. This led to investigations by Congress and

570-637: A 2010 article in The Washington Post , "every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7  billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications. The NSA sorts a fraction of those into 70 separate databases." Because of its listening task, NSA/CSS has been heavily involved in cryptanalytic research, continuing the work of predecessor agencies which had broken many World War II codes and ciphers (see, for instance, Purple , Venona project , and JN-25 ). In 2004, NSA Central Security Service and

684-628: A 2020 American Economic Review study, East German industrial espionage in West Germany significantly reduced the gap in total factor productivity between the two countries. A secret report from the Military-Industrial Commission of the USSR (VPK), from 1979–80, detailed how spetsinformatsiya ( Russian : специнформация , "special records") could be utilised in twelve different military industrial areas. Writing in

798-625: A CIA plot (ordered by the administration of President John F. Kennedy ) to assassinate Fidel Castro . The investigation also uncovered NSA's wiretaps on targeted U.S. citizens. After the Church Committee hearings, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 was passed. This was designed to limit the practice of mass surveillance in the United States . In 1986, the NSA intercepted

912-865: A concern for governments, due to potential attacks by hostile foreign governments or terrorist groups. One of the means of perpetrators conducting industrial espionage is by exploiting vulnerabilities in computer software. Malware and spyware are "tool[s] for industrial espionage", in "transmitting digital copies of trade secrets, customer plans, future plans and contacts". Newer forms of malware include devices which surreptitiously switch on mobile phones camera and recording devices. In attempts to tackle such attacks on their intellectual property, companies are increasingly keeping important information "off network," leaving an "air gap", with some companies building Faraday cages to shield from electromagnetic or cellphone transmissions. The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack uses compromised computer systems to orchestrate

1026-438: A crisis. This means that rather than instinctively reaching for human, on-site spying, the United States will want to look to those impersonal technical systems, primarily satellite photography and intercepts". Former CIA Director James Woolsey acknowledged in 2000 that the United States steals economic secrets from foreign firms and their governments "with espionage, with communications, with reconnaissance satellites". He listed

1140-603: A file xkeyscorerules100.txt, sourced by German TV stations NDR and WDR , who claim to have excerpts from its source code) reveal that the NSA tracks users of privacy-enhancing software tools, including Tor ; an anonymous email service provided by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and readers of the Linux Journal . Linus Torvalds ,

1254-652: A flood of requests on the target system, causing it to shut down and deny service to other users. It could potentially be used for economic or industrial espionage with the purpose of sabotage. This method was allegedly utilized by Russian secret services, over a period of two weeks on a cyberattack on Estonia in May 2007, in response to the removal of a Soviet era war memorial. In 1848, the British East India Company broke Qing China 's global near- monopoly on tea production by smuggling Chinese tea out of

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1368-543: A guided tour of a factory and then get "lost". A spy could be an engineer, a maintenance man, a cleaner, an insurance salesman, or an inspector: anyone who has legitimate access to the premises. A spy may break into the premises to steal data and may search through waste paper and refuse, known as "dumpster diving". Information may be compromised via unsolicited requests for information, marketing surveys, or use of technical support or research or software facilities. Outsourced industrial producers may ask for information outside

1482-399: A major cryptography conference was J. Solinas' presentation on efficient Elliptic Curve Cryptography algorithms at Crypto 1997. The IAD's cooperative approach to academia and industry culminated in its support for a transparent process for replacing the outdated Data Encryption Standard (DES) by an Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Cybersecurity policy expert Susan Landau attributes

1596-589: A million such targets. These lists have been subject of controversy as in 2008 it was revealed that they contained some terms targeting the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), the Eurocopter project as well as French administration, which were first noticed by BND employees in 2005. After the revelations made by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the BND decided to investigate

1710-451: A particular firm and feed back data. Whilst China was identified as the country most active in the use of internet spying, up to 120 other countries were said to be using similar techniques. The Chinese government responded to UK accusations of economic espionage by saying that the report of such activities was 'slanderous' and that the government opposed hacking which is prohibited by law. German counter-intelligence experts have maintained

1824-520: A product called Chordiant Marketing Director. Yue previously filed lawsuits against Symantec Corporation for a similar theft. Revelations from the Snowden documents have provided information to the effect that the United States, notably vis-à-vis the NSA, has been conducting aggressive economic espionage against Brazil . Canadian intelligence has apparently supported U.S. economic espionage efforts. The Chinese cybersecurity company Qihoo 360 accused

1938-477: A result of the boomerang routing of Canadian Internet service providers . A document included in NSA files released with Glenn Greenwald 's book No Place to Hide details how the agency's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) and other NSA units gain access to hardware. They intercept routers , servers , and other network hardware being shipped to organizations targeted for surveillance and install covert implant firmware onto them before they are delivered. This

2052-555: A sustained organized way. The rising use of the internet has also extended opportunities for industrial espionage with the aim of sabotage. In the early 2000s, energy companies were increasingly coming under attack from hackers. Energy power systems, doing jobs like monitoring power grids or water flow, once isolated from the other computer networks, were now being connected to the internet, leaving them more vulnerable, having historically few built-in security features. The use of these methods of industrial espionage have increasingly become

2166-525: A technically experienced civilian. The Armed Forces Security Agency was the predecessor to the National Security Agency and existed from 1949 to 1952. National Security Agency Originating as a unit to decipher coded communications in World War II , it was officially formed as the NSA by President Harry S. Truman in 1952. Between then and the end of the Cold War, it became the largest of

2280-410: Is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security . While political espionage is conducted or orchestrated by governments and is international in scope, industrial or corporate espionage is more often national and occurs between companies or corporations . Economic or industrial espionage takes place in two main forms. In short, the purpose of espionage

2394-414: Is also demonstrated by a number of profiling studies, some government, some corporate. The United States government currently has a polygraph examination entitled the "Test of Espionage and Sabotage" (TES), contributing to the notion of the interrelationship between espionage and sabotage countermeasures. In practice, particularly by "trusted insiders", they are generally considered functionally identical for

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2508-937: Is believed by Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian to be the model for the comprehensive worldwide mass archiving of communications which NSA is engaged in as of 2013. A dedicated unit of the NSA locates targets for the CIA for extrajudicial assassination in the Middle East. The NSA has also spied extensively on the European Union, the United Nations, and numerous governments including allies and trading partners in Europe, South America, and Asia. In June 2015, WikiLeaks published documents showing that NSA spied on French companies. WikiLeaks also published documents showing that NSA spied on federal German ministries since

2622-499: Is generally identified as state backed or sponsored, because the "access to personal, financial or analytic resources" identified exceed that which could be accessed by cyber criminals or individual hackers. Sensitive military or defense engineering or other industrial information may not have immediate monetary value to criminals, compared with, say, bank details. Analysis of cyberattacks suggests deep knowledge of networks, with targeted attacks, obtained by numerous individuals operating in

2736-450: Is known to be one of the world's most targeted areas for espionage, though any industry with information of use to competitors may be a target. Information can make the difference between success and failure; if a trade secret is stolen, the competitive playing field is leveled or even tipped in favor of a competitor. Although a lot of information-gathering is accomplished legally through competitive intelligence, at times corporations feel

2850-610: Is not, a reflection of current policy or operations". In September 2019, security firm Qi An Xin published report linking the CIA to a series of attacks targeting Chinese aviation agencies between 2012 and 2017. Israel has an active program to gather proprietary information within the United States. These collection activities are primarily directed at obtaining information on military systems and advanced computing applications that can be used in Israel's sizable armaments industry. Israel

2964-428: Is sometimes considered to have conducted an early case of industrial espionage. Historical accounts have been written of industrial espionage between Britain and France . Attributed to Britain's emergence as an "industrial creditor", the second decade of the 18th century saw the emergence of a large-scale state-sponsored effort to surreptitiously take British industrial technology to France. Witnesses confirmed both

3078-445: Is to gather knowledge about one or more organizations. It may include the acquisition of intellectual property , such as information on industrial manufacture, ideas, techniques and processes, recipes and formulas. Or it could include sequestration of proprietary or operational information, such as that on customer datasets, pricing, sales, marketing, research and development, policies, prospective bids, planning or marketing strategies or

3192-559: The Belgian Sûreté de l'État . He revealed information about industrial espionage conducted by the ring, including the fact that Russian agents had obtained details of Concorde 's advanced electronics system. He testified against two Kodak employees, living and working in Britain, during a trial in which they were accused of passing information on industrial processes to him, though they were eventually acquitted. According to

3306-547: The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists , Philip Hanson detailed a spetsinformatsiya system in which 12 industrial branch ministries formulated requests for information to aid technological development in their military programs. Acquisition plans were described as operating on 2-year and 5-year cycles with about 3000 tasks underway each year. Efforts were aimed at civilian and military industrial targets, such as in

3420-715: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court when within U.S. borders. Alleged Echelon-related activities, including its use for motives other than national security, including political and industrial espionage , received criticism from countries outside the UKUSA alliance. The NSA was also involved in planning to blackmail people with " SEXINT ", intelligence gained about a potential target's sexual activity and preferences. Those targeted had not committed any apparent crime nor were they charged with one. To support its facial recognition program,

3534-811: The National Cyber Security Division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agreed to expand the NSA Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education Program. As part of the National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23 (NSPD 54), signed on January 8, 2008, by President Bush, the NSA became the lead agency to monitor and protect all of

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3648-458: The Senate . In accordance with Department of Defense Directive 5100.20, dated 23 December 1971, the director of the NSA must always be a commissioned officer of the military services. As the assignment is currently part of a tri-hatted position, the director of the NSA is appointed to the grade of a four-star general or admiral during the period of his incumbency. The director's deputy is always

3762-601: The U.S. intelligence organizations in terms of personnel and budget, but information available as of 2013 indicates that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) pulled ahead in this regard, with a budget of $ 14.7 billion. The NSA currently conducts worldwide mass data collection and has been known to physically bug electronic systems as one method to this end. The NSA is also alleged to have been behind such attack software as Stuxnet , which severely damaged Iran's nuclear program . The NSA, alongside

3876-639: The US Court of Appeals . The court also added that the US intelligence leaders, who publicly defended it, were not telling the truth. NSA's eavesdropping mission includes radio broadcasting, both from various organizations and individuals, the Internet, telephone calls, and other intercepted forms of communication. Its secure communications mission includes military, diplomatic, and all other sensitive, confidential, or secret government communications. According to

3990-487: The United States in 1789. In order to catch up with technological advances of European powers, the US government in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries actively encouraged intellectual piracy. American founding father and first U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton advocated rewarding those bringing "improvements and secrets of extraordinary value" into the United States. This was instrumental in making

4104-685: The Vietnam War by providing evidence of a North Vietnamese attack on the American destroyer USS  Maddox during the Gulf of Tonkin incident . A secret operation, code-named " MINARET ", was set up by the NSA to monitor the phone communications of Senators Frank Church and Howard Baker , as well as key leaders of the civil rights movement , including Martin Luther King Jr. , and prominent U.S. journalists and athletes who criticized

4218-602: The Vietnam War , with about 30,000 NESTOR sets produced. However, a variety of technical and operational problems limited their use, allowing the North Vietnamese to exploit and intercept U.S. communications. In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal , a congressional hearing in 1975 led by Senator Frank Church revealed that the NSA, in collaboration with Britain's SIGINT intelligence agency, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), had routinely intercepted

4332-403: The Vietnam War . However, the project turned out to be controversial, and an internal review by the NSA concluded that its Minaret program was "disreputable if not outright illegal". The NSA mounted a major effort to secure tactical communications among U.S. forces during the war with mixed success. The NESTOR family of compatible secure voice systems it developed was widely deployed during

4446-428: The petrochemical industries . Some information was gathered to compare Soviet technological advancement with that of their competitors. Much unclassified information was also gathered, blurring the boundary with "competitive intelligence". The Soviet military was recognised as making much better use of acquired information than civilian industries, where their record in replicating and developing industrial technology

4560-775: The 1980s. BYTE reported in April 1984, for example, that although the Soviets sought to develop their own microelectronics, their technology appeared to be several years behind the West's. Soviet CPUs required multiple chips and appeared to be close or exact copies of American products such as the Intel 3000 and DEC LSI-11/2 . Some of these activities were directed via the East German Stasi (Ministry for State Security). One such operation, "Operation Brunnhilde," operated from

4674-486: The 1990s. Even Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel 's cellphones and phones of her predecessors had been intercepted. Edward Snowden revealed in June 2013 that between February 8 and March 8, 2013, the NSA collected about 124.8  billion telephone data items and 97.1  billion computer data items throughout the world, as was displayed in charts from an internal NSA tool codenamed Boundless Informant . Initially, it

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4788-534: The 2009 cyber attack on Google , Joe Stewart of SecureWorks referred to a "persistent campaign of 'espionage-by-malware' emanating from the People's Republic of China (PRC)" with both corporate and state secrets being "Shanghaied". The Northrop Grumman report states that the collection of US defense engineering data stolen through cyberattacks is regarded as having "saved the recipient of the information years of R&D and significant amounts of funding". Concerns about

4902-574: The AFSA was unable to centralize communications intelligence and failed to coordinate with civilian agencies that shared its interests, such as the Department of State , the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In December 1951, President Harry S. Truman ordered a panel to investigate how AFSA had failed to achieve its goals. The results of the investigation led to improvements and its redesignation as

5016-638: The CIA, maintains a physical presence in many countries across the globe; the CIA/NSA joint Special Collection Service (a highly classified intelligence team) inserts eavesdropping devices in high-value targets (such as presidential palaces or embassies). SCS collection tactics allegedly encompass "close surveillance, burglary, wiretapping, [and] breaking and entering". Unlike the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), both of which specialize primarily in foreign human espionage ,

5130-560: The CSC, the officeholder reports to the under secretary of defense for intelligence , and as the commander of U.S. Cyber Command, the officeholder reports directly to the secretary of defense . According to 10 U.S.C.   § 201 of the United States Code , the director of the NSA is recommended by the secretary of defense and nominated for appointment by the president . The nominee must be confirmed via majority vote by

5244-540: The Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of an 11-year-long hacking campaign that targeted several industries including aviation organizations, scientific research institutions, petroleum firms, internet companies, and government agencies. A 2009 report to the US government, by aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman , describes Chinese economic espionage as comprising "the single greatest threat to U.S. technology". Blogging on

5358-724: The Chamber's initial successes, it was shut down in 1929 by U.S. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson , who defended his decision by stating, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail." During World War II , the Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) was created to intercept and decipher the communications of the Axis powers . When the war ended, the SIS was reorganized as the Army Security Agency (ASA), and it

5472-726: The East India Company hired Scottish botanist Robert Fortune to travel to China under the guise of a Chinese nobleman and obtain Chinese trade secrets and tea plants for replanting. Infiltrating Chinese tea-making facilities, Fortune recorded the Chinese process for creating tea and smuggled tea leaves and seeds back to the East India Company. The East India Company later introduced these methods to company-ruled India , using India to compete and surpass China in tea production. Between 1987 and 1989, IBM and Texas Instruments were thought to have been targeted by French DGSE with

5586-576: The German division of General Motors , accused Volkswagen of industrial espionage after Opel's chief of production, Jose Ignacio Lopez, and seven other executives moved to Volkswagen. Volkswagen subsequently threatened to sue for defamation, resulting in a four-year legal battle. The case, which was finally settled in 1997, resulted in one of the largest settlements in the history of industrial espionage, with Volkswagen agreeing to pay General Motors $ 100 million and to buy at least $ 1 billion of car parts from

5700-497: The German economy is losing around €53 billion or the equivalent of 30,000 jobs to economic espionage yearly. In Operation Eikonal , German BND agents received "selector lists" from the NSA – search terms for their dragnet surveillance. They contain IP addresses, mobile phone numbers and email accounts with the BND surveillance system containing hundreds of thousands and possibly more than

5814-411: The NSA and DoD Inspectors General . The project was canceled in early 2004. Turbulence started in 2005. It was developed in small, inexpensive "test" pieces, rather than one grand plan like Trailblazer. It also included offensive cyber-warfare capabilities, like injecting malware into remote computers. Congress criticized Turbulence in 2007 for having similar bureaucratic problems as Trailblazer. It

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5928-714: The NSA and other U.S. defense cryptanalysis components. To further ensure streamlined communication between the signals intelligence community divisions, the NSA Director simultaneously serves as the Commander of the United States Cyber Command and as Chief of the Central Security Service. The NSA's actions have been a matter of political controversy on several occasions, including its spying on anti–Vietnam War leaders and

6042-421: The NSA does not publicly conduct human intelligence gathering . The NSA is entrusted with assisting with and coordinating, SIGINT elements for other government organizations—which are prevented by Executive Order from engaging in such activities on their own. As part of these responsibilities, the agency has a co-located organization called the Central Security Service (CSS), which facilitates cooperation between

6156-590: The NSA is intercepting "millions of images per day". The Real Time Regional Gateway is a data collection program introduced in 2005 in Iraq by the NSA during the Iraq War that consisted of gathering all electronic communication, storing it, then searching and otherwise analyzing it. It was effective in providing information about Iraqi insurgents who had eluded less comprehensive techniques. This "collect it all" strategy introduced by NSA director, Keith B. Alexander ,

6270-447: The NSA that allowed the export of a version that supported stronger keys with 64 bits, but 24 of the bits were encrypted with a special key and included in the message to provide a "workload reduction factor" for the NSA. This strengthened the protection for users of Notes outside the US against private-sector industrial espionage , but not against spying by the US government. While it is assumed that foreign transmissions terminating in

6384-567: The NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group implant catalog, after implanting Cottonmouth, the NSA can establish a network bridge "that allows the NSA to load exploit software onto modified computers as well as allowing the NSA to relay commands and data between hardware and software implants." NSA's mission, as outlined in Executive Order 12333 in 1981, is to collect information that constitutes "foreign intelligence or counterintelligence" while not "acquiring information concerning

6498-583: The NSA's ability to surveil the domestic Internet traffic of foreign countries through " boomerang routing ". The origins of the National Security Agency can be traced back to April 28, 1917, three weeks after the U.S. Congress declared war on Germany in World War I . A code and cipher decryption unit was established as the Cable and Telegraph Section, which was also known as the Cipher Bureau. It

6612-653: The NSA's harmonious collaboration with industry and academia in the selection of the AES in 2000—and the Agency's support for the choice of a strong encryption algorithm designed by Europeans rather than by Americans—to Brian Snow , who was the Technical Director of IAD and represented the NSA as cochairman of the Technical Working Group for the AES competition, and Michael Jacobs , who headed IAD at

6726-673: The NSA's role in economic espionage in a report entitled 'Development of Surveillance Technology and Risk of Abuse of Economic Information'. That year, the NSA founded the NSA Hall of Honor , a memorial at the National Cryptologic Museum in Fort Meade, Maryland. The memorial is a, "tribute to the pioneers and heroes who have made significant and long-lasting contributions to American cryptology". NSA employees must be retired for more than fifteen years to qualify for

6840-460: The National Security Agency. The National Security Council issued a memorandum of October 24, 1952, that revised National Security Council Intelligence Directive (NSCID) 9 . On the same day, Truman issued a second memorandum that called for the establishment of the NSA. The actual establishment of the NSA was done by a November 4 memo by Robert A. Lovett , the Secretary of Defense , changing

6954-597: The U.S. (such as a non-U.S. citizen accessing a U.S. website) subject non-U.S. citizens to NSA surveillance, recent research into boomerang routing has raised new concerns about the NSA's ability to surveil the domestic Internet traffic of foreign countries. Boomerang routing occurs when an Internet transmission that originates and terminates in a single country transits another. Research at the University of Toronto has suggested that approximately 25% of Canadian domestic traffic may be subject to NSA surveillance activities as

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7068-598: The United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the International Organization for Standardization (aka ISO). This memo appears to give credence to previous speculation by cryptographers at Microsoft Research . Edward Snowden claims that the NSA often bypasses encryption altogether by lifting information before it is encrypted or after it is decrypted. XKeyscore rules (as specified in

7182-542: The United States a haven for industrial spies. East-West commercial development opportunities after World War I saw a rise in Soviet interest in American and European manufacturing know-how, exploited by Amtorg Corporation . Later, with Western restrictions on the export of items thought likely to increase military capabilities to the USSR , Soviet industrial espionage was a well known adjunct to other spying activities up until

7296-447: The ability to monitor a large proportion of the world's transmitted civilian telephone, fax, and data traffic. During the early 1970s, the first of what became more than eight large satellite communications dishes were installed at Menwith Hill. Investigative journalist Duncan Campbell reported in 1988 on the " ECHELON " surveillance program, an extension of the UKUSA Agreement on global signals intelligence SIGINT , and detailed how

7410-500: The agency's participation in economic espionage . In 2013, the NSA had many of its secret surveillance programs revealed to the public by Edward Snowden , a former NSA contractor. According to the leaked documents, the NSA intercepts and stores the communications of over a billion people worldwide, including United States citizens. The documents also revealed that the NSA tracks hundreds of millions of people's movements using cell phones metadata . Internationally, research has pointed to

7524-432: The agreed-upon contract. Computers have facilitated the process of collecting information because of the ease of access to large amounts of information through physical contact or the Internet. Economic and industrial espionage has a long history. Father Francois Xavier d'Entrecolles , who visited Jingdezhen , China in 1712 and later used this visit to reveal the manufacturing methods of Chinese porcelain to Europe,

7638-421: The army cryptographic section of Military Intelligence (MI-8) moved to New York City on May 20, 1919, where it continued intelligence activities as the Code Compilation Company under the direction of Yardley. After the disbandment of the U.S. Army cryptographic section of military intelligence known as MI-8, the U.S. government created the Cipher Bureau, also known as Black Chamber , in 1919. The Black Chamber

7752-422: The attack, with some Google China employees being denied access to the company's internal networks after the company's announcement. In February 2010, computer experts from the U.S. National Security Agency claimed that the attacks on Google probably originated from two Chinese universities associated with expertise in computer science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Shandong Lanxiang Vocational School ,

7866-519: The benefit of Chinese "national champions". In Google's case, they may have (also) been concerned about the possible misappropriation of source code or other technology for the benefit of Chinese rival Baidu . In March 2010 Google subsequently decided to cease offering censored results in China, leading to the closing of its Chinese operation. The United States charged two former NetLogic Inc. engineers, Lan Lee and Yuefei Ge, of committing economic espionage against TSMC and NetLogic, Inc. A jury acquitted

7980-510: The best way to get information is to take it. Economic or industrial espionage is a threat to any business whose livelihood depends on information. In recent years, economic or industrial espionage has taken on an expanded definition. For instance, attempts to sabotage a corporation may be considered industrial espionage; in this sense, the term takes on the wider connotations of its parent word. That espionage and sabotage (corporate or otherwise) have become more clearly associated with each other

8094-670: The changing compositions and locations of production. It may describe activities such as theft of trade secrets , bribery , blackmail and technological surveillance. As well as orchestrating espionage on commercial organizations, governments can also be targets – for example, to determine the terms of a tender for a government contract. Economic and industrial espionage is most commonly associated with technology-heavy industries, including computer software and hardware, biotechnology , aerospace , telecommunications , transportation and engine technology, automobiles , machine tools , energy , materials and coatings and so on. Silicon Valley

8208-599: The communications of the Libyan government during the immediate aftermath of the Berlin discotheque bombing . The White House asserted that the NSA interception had provided "irrefutable" evidence that Libya was behind the bombing, which U.S. President Ronald Reagan cited as a justification for the 1986 United States bombing of Libya . In 1999, a multi-year investigation by the European Parliament highlighted

8322-508: The company over 7 years, although it did not explicitly apologize for Lopez's behavior. In April 2009, Starwood accused its rival Hilton Worldwide of a "massive" case of industrial espionage. After being acquired by The Blackstone Group , Hilton employed 10 managers and executives from Starwood. Starwood accused Hilton of stealing corporate information relating to its luxury brand concepts, used in setting up its Denizen hotels. Specifically, former head of its luxury brands group, Ron Klein,

8436-655: The country's banks, accountants and legal firms warning of attacks from Chinese 'state organisations'. A summary was also posted on the secure website of the Centre for the Protection of the National Infrastructure, accessed by some of the nation's 'critical infrastructure' companies, including 'telecoms firms, banks and water and electricity companies'. One security expert warned about the use of 'custom trojans ,' software specifically designed to hack into

8550-535: The decrypted traffic of many of the conference delegations, including the Japanese . The Black Chamber successfully persuaded Western Union , the largest U.S. telegram company at the time, as well as several other communications companies, to illegally give the Black Chamber access to cable traffic of foreign embassies and consulates. Soon, these companies publicly discontinued their collaboration. Despite

8664-427: The defendants of the charges with regard to TSMC and deadlocked on the charges with regard to NetLogic. In May 2010, a federal judge dismissed all the espionage charges against the two defendants. The judge ruled that the U.S. government presented no evidence of espionage. In May 2010, the federal jury convicted Chordiant Software, Inc., a U.S. corporation, of stealing Dongxiao Yue's JRPC technologies and used them in

8778-595: The domestic activities of United States persons ". NSA has declared that it relies on the FBI to collect information on foreign intelligence activities within the borders of the United States while confining its activities within the United States to the embassies and missions of foreign nations. The appearance of a 'Domestic Surveillance Directorate' of the NSA was soon exposed as a hoax in 2013. Economic espionage Industrial espionage , also known as economic espionage , corporate spying , or corporate espionage ,

8892-676: The ease at which it can be copied and transmitted. The use of computers for espionage increased rapidly in the 1990s. Information has commonly been stolen by individuals posing as subsidiary workers, such as cleaners or repairmen, gaining access to unattended computers and copying information from them. Laptops were, and still are, a prime target, with those traveling abroad on business being warned not to leave them for any period of time. Perpetrators of espionage have been known to find many ways of conning unsuspecting individuals into parting, often only temporarily, from their possessions, enabling others to access and steal information. A "bag-op" refers to

9006-538: The eavesdropping operations worked. On November 3, 1999, the BBC reported that they had confirmation from the Australian Government of the existence of a powerful "global spying network" code-named Echelon, that could "eavesdrop on every single phone call, fax or e-mail, anywhere on the planet" with Britain and the United States as the chief protagonists. They confirmed that Menwith Hill was "linked directly to

9120-527: The equivalent agencies in the United Kingdom ( Government Communications Headquarters ), Canada ( Communications Security Establishment ), Australia ( Australian Signals Directorate ), and New Zealand ( Government Communications Security Bureau ), otherwise known as the UKUSA group, was reported to be in command of the operation of the so-called ECHELON system. Its capabilities were suspected to include

9234-560: The extent of cyberattacks has led to the situation being described as the dawn of a "new cold cyberwar". According to Edward Snowden , the National Security Agency spies on foreign companies. In June 2015 Wikileaks published documents about the National Security Agency spying on French companies. During December 2007, this was suddenly revealed that Jonathan Evans, head of the United Kingdom 's MI5 , had sent out confidential letters to 300 chief executives and security chiefs at

9348-524: The federal government's computer networks from cyber-terrorism . A part of the NSA's mission is to serve as a combat support agency for the Department of Defense. Operations by the National Security Agency can be divided into three types: "Echelon" was created in the incubator of the Cold War . Today it is a legacy system , and several NSA stations are closing. NSA/CSS, in combination with

9462-425: The focus of numerous industrial espionage cases that have resulted in legal battles. Some countries hire individuals to do spying rather than the use of their own intelligence agencies. Academics, business delegates, and students are often thought to be used by governments in gathering information. Some countries, such as Japan, have been reported to expect students to be debriefed on returning home. A spy may follow

9576-410: The founder of Linux kernel , joked during a LinuxCon keynote on September 18, 2013, that the NSA, who is the founder of SELinux , wanted a backdoor in the kernel. However, later, Linus' father, a Member of the European Parliament (MEP), revealed that the NSA actually did this. When my oldest son was asked the same question: "Has he been approached by the NSA about backdoors?" he said "No", but at

9690-635: The headquarters of the US National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Meade in Maryland". NSA's United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18 (USSID 18) strictly prohibited the interception or collection of information about "... U.S. persons , entities, corporations or organizations...." without explicit written legal permission from the United States Attorney General when the subject is located abroad, or

9804-558: The intention of helping France's Groupe Bull . In 1993, U.S. aerospace companies were also thought to have been targeted by French interests. During the early 1990s, France was described as one of the most aggressive pursuers of espionage to garner foreign industrial and technological secrets. France accused the U.S. of attempting to sabotage its high tech industrial base. The government of France allegedly continues to conduct ongoing industrial espionage against American aerodynamics and satellite companies. In 1993, car manufacturer Opel ,

9918-475: The international communications of prominent anti-Vietnam war leaders such as Jane Fonda and Dr. Benjamin Spock . The NSA tracked these individuals in a secret filing system that was destroyed in 1974. Following the resignation of President Richard Nixon , there were several investigations into suspected misuse of FBI, CIA and NSA facilities. Senator Frank Church uncovered previously unknown activity, such as

10032-581: The inveigling of tradespersons abroad and the placing of apprentices in England. Protests by those such as ironworkers in Sheffield and steelworkers in Newcastle , about skilled industrial workers being enticed abroad, led to the first English legislation aimed at preventing this method of economic and industrial espionage. This did not prevent Samuel Slater from bringing British textile technology to

10146-614: The issue whose October 2013 conclusion was that at least 2,000 of these selectors were aimed at Western European or even German interests which has been a violation of the Memorandum of Agreement that the US and Germany signed in 2002 in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks . After reports emerged in 2014 that EADS and Eurocopter had been surveillance targets the Left Party and the Greens filed an official request to obtain evidence of

10260-538: The latter having close links to the Chinese military . Google claimed at least 20 other companies had also been targeted in the cyber attack, said by the London Times , to have been part of an "ambitious and sophisticated attempt to steal secrets from unwitting corporate victims" including "defence contractors, finance and technology companies". Rather than being the work of individuals or organised criminals,

10374-572: The level of sophistication of the attack was thought to have been "more typical of a nation state". Some commentators speculated as to whether the attack was part of what is thought to be a concerted Chinese industrial espionage operation aimed at getting "high-tech information to jump-start China's economy". Critics pointed to what was alleged to be a lax attitude to the intellectual property of foreign businesses in China, letting them operate but then seeking to copy or reverse engineer their technology for

10488-412: The memorial. NSA's infrastructure deteriorated in the 1990s as defense budget cuts resulted in maintenance deferrals. On January 24, 2000, NSA headquarters suffered a total network outage for three days caused by an overloaded network. Incoming traffic was successfully stored on agency servers, but it could not be directed and processed. The agency carried out emergency repairs for $ 3  million to get

10602-515: The mid-1950s until early 1966 and made use of spies from many Communist Bloc countries. Through at least 20 forays, many western European industrial secrets were compromised. One member of the "Brunnhilde" ring was a Swiss chemical engineer , Dr. Jean Paul Soupert (also known as "Air Bubble"), living in Brussels . He was described by Peter Wright in Spycatcher as having been "doubled" by

10716-409: The name of the AFSA to the NSA, and making the new agency responsible for all communications intelligence. Since President Truman's memo was a classified document, the existence of the NSA was not known to the public at that time. Due to its ultra-secrecy, the U.S. intelligence community referred to the NSA as "No Such Agency". In the 1960s, the NSA played a key role in expanding U.S. commitment to

10830-559: The nation and copying Chinese tea-making processes. The British Empire had previously run a considerable trade deficit with China by importing the nation's tea and other goods. The British attempted to rectify the deficit by trading opium to the Chinese, but encountered difficulties after the Daoguang Emperor banned the opium trade and the First Opium War broke out. To avoid further issues in trading tea with China,

10944-481: The post-September 11 era, Snow was replaced as Technical Director, Jacobs retired, and IAD could no longer effectively oppose proposed actions by the offensive arm of the NSA. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks , the NSA created new IT systems to deal with the flood of information from new technologies like the Internet and cell phones. ThinThread contained advanced data mining capabilities. It also had

11058-472: The purpose of informing countermeasures. Economic or industrial espionage commonly occurs in one of two ways. Firstly, a dissatisfied employee appropriates information to advance interests or to damage the company. Secondly, a competitor or foreign government seeks information to advance its own technological or financial interest. " Moles ", or trusted insiders, are generally considered the best sources for economic or industrial espionage. Historically known as

11172-449: The redirection of personnel but the use of spying apparatus such as computer databases, scanners for eavesdropping , spy satellites , bugs and wires . Former CIA Director Stansfield Turner stated in 1991, "as we increase emphasis on securing economic intelligence, we will have to spy on the more developed countries-our allies and friends with whom we compete economically-but to whom we turn first for political and military assistance in

11286-556: The same time he nodded. Then he was sort of in the legal free. He had given the right answer, everybody understood that the NSA had approached him. IBM Notes was the first widely adopted software product to use public key cryptography for client-server and server–server authentication and encryption of data. Until US laws regulating encryption were changed in 2000, IBM and Lotus were prohibited from exporting versions of Notes that supported symmetric encryption keys that were longer than 40 bits. In 1997, Lotus negotiated an agreement with

11400-488: The system running again. (Some incoming traffic was also directed instead to Britain's GCHQ for the time being.) Director Michael Hayden called the outage a "wake-up call" for the need to invest in the agency's infrastructure. In the 1990s the defensive arm of the NSA—the Information Assurance Directorate (IAD)—started working more openly; the first public technical talk by an NSA scientist at

11514-516: The three reasons as understanding whether sanctions are functioning for countries under sanction, monitoring dual-use technology that could be used to produce or develop weapons, and to spy on bribery. In 2013 The United States was accused of spying on Brazilian oil company Petrobras. Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff stated that it was tantamount to industrial espionage and had no security justification. In 2014 former US intelligence officer Edward Snowden stated that America's National Security Agency

11628-405: The time. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 , the NSA believed that it had public support for a dramatic expansion of its surveillance activities. According to Neal Koblitz and Alfred Menezes , the period when the NSA was a trusted partner with academia and industry in the development of cryptographic standards started to come to an end when, as part of the change in the NSA in

11742-399: The use of hotel staff to access data, such as through laptops, in hotel rooms. Information may be stolen in transit, in taxis , at airport baggage counters, baggage carousels , on trains and so on. The rise of the Internet and computer networks has expanded the range and detail of information available and the ease of access for the purpose of industrial espionage. This type of operation

11856-528: Was accused by the US government of selling US military technology and secrets to China in 1993. In 2014 American counter-intelligence officials told members of the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees that Israel's current espionage activities in America are "unrivaled". Computers have become key in exercising industrial espionage due to the enormous amount of information they contain and

11970-517: Was accused of downloading "truckloads of documents" from a laptop to his personal email account. On 13 January 2010, Google announced that operators, from within China, had hacked into their Google China operation, stealing intellectual property and, in particular, accessing the email accounts of human rights activists. The attack was thought to have been part of a more widespread cyber attack on companies within China which has become known as Operation Aurora . Intruders were thought to have launched

12084-733: Was based on a leaked report issued from former U.S. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper 's office that evaluated how intelligence could be used to overcome a loss of the United States' technological and innovative edge. When contacted, the Director of National Intelligence office responded, "the United States—unlike our adversaries—does not steal proprietary corporate information", and insisted that "the Intelligence Community regularly engages in analytic exercises". The report, he said, "is not intended to be, and

12198-521: Was described by an NSA manager as "some of the most productive operations in TAO because they preposition access points into hard target networks around the world." Computers seized by the NSA due to interdiction are often modified with a physical device known as Cottonmouth. Cottonmouth is a device that can be inserted in the USB port of a computer to establish remote access to the targeted machine. According to

12312-400: Was engaged in industrial espionage and that they spied on German companies that compete with US firms. He also highlighted the fact the NSA uses mobile phone apps such as Angry Birds to gather personal data. According to a 2014 Glenn Greenwald article, "potentially sabotaging another country's hi-tech industries and their top companies has long been a sanctioned American strategy." The article

12426-634: Was headquartered in Washington, D.C., and was part of the war effort under the executive branch without direct congressional authorization. During the war, it was relocated in the army's organizational chart several times. On July 5, 1917, Herbert O. Yardley was assigned to head the unit. At that point, the unit consisted of Yardley and two civilian clerks. It absorbed the Navy's cryptanalysis functions in July 1918. World War I ended on November 11, 1918 , and

12540-729: Was placed under the leadership of the Director of Military Intelligence. On May 20, 1949, all cryptologic activities were centralized under a national organization called the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA). This organization was originally established within the U.S. Department of Defense under the command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff . The AFSA was tasked with directing the Department of Defense communications and electronic intelligence activities, except those of U.S. military intelligence units. However,

12654-591: Was poor. Following the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War , commentators, including the US Congressional Intelligence Committee, noted a redirection amongst the espionage community from military to industrial targets, with Western and former communist countries making use of "underemployed" spies and expanding programs directed at stealing information. The legacy of Cold War spying included not just

12768-526: Was reported that some of these data reflected eavesdropping on citizens in countries like Germany, Spain, and France, but later on, it became clear that those data were collected by European agencies during military missions abroad and were subsequently shared with NSA. In 2013, reporters uncovered a secret memo that claims the NSA created and pushed for the adoption of the Dual EC DRBG encryption standard that contained built-in vulnerabilities in 2006 to

12882-639: Was the United States' first peacetime cryptanalytic organization. Jointly funded by the Army and the State Department, the Cipher Bureau was disguised as a New York City commercial code company; it produced and sold such codes for business use. Its true mission, however, was to break the communications (chiefly diplomatic) of other nations. At the Washington Naval Conference , it aided American negotiators by providing them with

12996-417: Was to be a realization of information processing at higher speeds in cyberspace. The massive extent of the NSA's spying, both foreign and domestic, was revealed to the public in a series of detailed disclosures of internal NSA documents beginning in June 2013. Most of the disclosures were leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden . On 4 September 2020, the NSA's surveillance program was ruled unlawful by

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