Hackers are using Snowden leaks to reverse-engineer NSA techniques

Over the past year, we’ve learned of the many techniques the NSA has used to tap into global communications. However, Edward Snowden’s document leaks didn’t just uncover the gadgets the agency used, they also gave security researchers the necessary insights to develop their own. After the NSA’s classified Advanced Network Technology catalogue was published, Michael Ossmann and his team set about recreating two of its approved radio-based surveillance devices: one that could be fixed to a computer’s monitor connector to send on-screen images and another that can be fixed to a keyboard cable to collect keystrokes.

RADIO hackers have reverse-engineered some of the wireless spying gadgets used by the US National Security Agency. Using documents leaked by Edward Snowden, researchers have built simple but effective tools that can be attached to parts of a computer to gather private information in a host of intrusive ways. The NSA’s Advanced Network Technology catalogue was part of the avalanche of classified documents leaked by Snowden, a former agency contractor. The catalogue lists and pictures devices that agents can use to spy on a target’s computer or phone. The technologies include fake base stations for hijacking and monitoring cellphone calls and radio-equipped USB sticks that transmit a computer’s contents. But the catalogue also lists a number of mysterious computer-implantable devices called “retro reflectors” that boast a number of different surreptitious skills, including listening in on ambient sounds and harvesting keystrokes and on-screen images.