The NSA is Using Hidden Radios to Spy on Offline Computers

The NSA hacking and spying saga continues to unfold in 2014, with The New York Times reporting this week that the government agency doesn’t even need to rely on the Internet to keep tabs on its targets. Sources claim that the NSA has radio-based technology that allows it to spy directly on over 100,000 computers that aren’t connected to the Internet.

Codenamed “Quantum,” the purported technology has been in use since 2008 and utilizes circuit boards and USB cards that the agency hides inside the computers prior to delivery to the targets. The alleged “bad guys,” fearful of government monitoring, may not connect the hardware to an outside network, but these hidden transmitters still provide the NSA with access via “briefcase-size relay stations that intelligence agencies can set up miles away.”

Although the NSA’s credibility these days is minimal, the report’s sources claim that the technology isn’t being used inside the United States, and is instead focused on foreign criminal groups, such as hackers in Russia and China, and drug cartels in Mexico. Of note, Quantum was reportedly involved in the early stages of mapping Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment plant, helping lay the groundwork for the development of the infamous Stuxnet worm.

Government hacking of foreign or criminal computer networks is nothing new, but the reports about Quantum point to a new factor in the overall equation, as explained by James Andrew Lewis, a cyber security expert for the Center for Strategic and International Studies:

What’s new here is the scale and the sophistication of the intelligence agency’s ability to get into computers and networks to which no one has ever had access before. Some of these capabilities have been around for a while, but the combination of learning how to penetrate systems to insert software and learning how to do that using radio frequencies has given the U.S. a window it’s never had before.

When applied properly to stop criminal organizations and rogue governments, programs like Quantum can be invaluable to protecting the U.S. and its allies. But with the recent string of NSA revelations, we’re not sure we can trust anyone in the agency to understand the true meaning of the word.