Several documents that reveal the offensive cyber-operations of US spy agencies have been leaked reported the Washington Post. However, Cyber Campaign is claimed to be a broader and violent than anybody ever thought of as it uses movie-appropriate code names like GENIE, TURBINE, TAO, and The ROC. According to the reports, around 231 offensive cber-operations have been launched by US Spy agencies in 2011.
US places ‘secret implants’ like malware, into computers, firewalls and routers on tens of thousands machines each year under GENIE. This number may probably become millions in the future, if all goes according to the plan. At times such implants require CIA operatives or undercover military forces to physically execute them, although the Washington Post claims that it’s more often that a NSA group called Tailored Access Operations (TAO), with the goal to tape into networks rather than individual computer, they code an implant from software.
The Washington Post claims that, the implants created by TAO intend to persist through software and equipment upgrades that copy stored data, ‘harvest’ communications and tunnel into other connected networks. TAO is currently working on implants that will recognize select voice conversations of interest contained by a target network and exhilarate selected cuts or excerpts, as per the one budget document.
In certain cases, door to hundreds or thousands of others is opened by a single compromised device. In due course the next phase of distasteful cyber-operations, an automated system called TURBINE will be used by US spy agencies that will manage millions of implants for assembling intelligence and aggressive attacking.