The NSA has its own team of elite hackers | Hacker News Reader

The NSA has its own team of elite hackers

washingtonpost.com

47 pointsaustengary16 comments

Six months ago the idea of a team for hacking foreign evil-doers was awesome, and though I'm not an "elite hacker" I would've jumped at the opportunity. Now that we know the NSA is spying on everyone and collecting everything I don't think I would even consider working there.

It makes me wonder what these hackers think about their jobs now, and how much more difficult recruitment has gotten for the NSA.

They probably know a lot more than we do about the geopolitical situation and that's why they still work there.

Alternatively, there would be no shortage, even among your friends, of people who would march you to the gas chamber.

I don't see anything surprising here... Pick a government, any government, do you really think they don't recruit their best hackers for such team? Or was the general thought that only China's gov makes viruses to target other countries? I even know someone in my country who got recruited into our gov's hacking team after being arrested.

Roughly forty years ago, I saw an NSA recruiting notice tacked up on a bulletin board in the college math department's hallway. As I remember it, the notice said that the NSA aimed to stay five years ahead of the outside state of the art.

Information like this, and some of the other documents that have been released from the Snowden leaks recently, seem to be more than just "whistleblowing" and appear to do serious damage to the US's counter-terrorism and security efforts.

Unlikely. The terrorists have known for years that all of their technology was compromised by the US government. Osama Bin Laden would send his people hundreds of kilometers away to make phone calls on his behalf.

Also, it was Eugene Kaspersky that pointed the finger at the US and Israel over Stuxnet and Flame.

The only thing these documents do is make it clear the NSA has been lying or spinning much of the denials about these programs to avoid public scrutiny.

Public scrutiny? I, for one, don't really care if the NSA does these things, and I don't think most people in the US do. Or do you mean scrutiny from other governments, and people outside the US? Then yes, it seems like a pretty good idea to keep it covert.

How, precisely, does this information do "serious damage...", as you say. We already knew that the NSA can hack computers and cell phones; the article is simply more of the same.

I'd say any specifics – size, people involved – on such a program could be damaging, and it also gives other nations more ammo in defending their own such programs, by pointing out ours. I know everyone already probably knows we have things like this, but it's even more public now. They also talk about a document in there revealing the specifics of counter-surveillance for the Bin Laden raid.

So "serious" damage is probably too far. But how does this benefit the American people? The US has pretty good reasons for keeping such an effort covert, and this stuff doesn't come across as an affront to people's privacy and freedoms, not like the domestic surveillance programs did.

US hackers for the NSA have been able to publicly admit to performing offensive cyber actions for years, usually by mentioning they were on the "offense" side of the program when talking about previous employment. They couldn't admit to specific acts, of course, but they could admit that such acts - categorically - happened.

People just didn't care.

i wonder how those links to linkedin are going to go over ?

I'm more worried about LinkedIn being infiltrated and national intelligence employees -- be it government or private contractor employees -- becoming targets for reconnaissance.

It stands to reason that enumerating a list of past and present employees wouldn't be at all difficult, be it an automated or manual process.

Why do you think so? I am sure they are proud of working for such a fine agency. With their skillset they certainly would have other options but choose to do NSA work instead.

The sad truth is that I'm not even being ironic here. I am sure the us vs. them ideology is deeply rooted with many three letter agency employees. Any form of backslash is therefore interpreted as a confirmation that they are doing the right thing and those not "with" them do not understand / undermine their "mission".

The NSA has its own team of elite hackers

And the sky is /looks blue .

Maybe that's why there's no gag order or NDA for the former employees that detail what they did. Everyone knows and expects it.

and they enjoy HN too, I suppose.

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