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NSA Failed to Install “Anti-Leak” Software Because Of Low Net Bandwidth


Matsuda

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In the wake of the WikiLeaks scandal in 2010, the National Security Agency purchased software from Raytheon to counter a Private Manning-like "insider threat." But that software went uninstalled at the NSA's Remote Operations Center facility in Hawaii where former contractor Edward Snowden worked, according to a new report on Friday from Reuters.

Unnamed current and former government officials told Reuters that the software was never installed at the Hawaii facility because of "bandwidth issues." The available wide area network bandwidth to the outpost was not enough for the software to be downloaded and deployed to its local network, or for the software to connect to servers back in the continental US with enough reliability to ensure that the software would work, according to one official.

Raytheon's Sureview Insider Threat Management software includes agent software that streams back auditing data on user and system activities, allowing administrators to reconstruct security events. The agent software watches for attempts to surreptitiously move data off secured systems to external storage, including downloads and screenshots. The software is supposed to even work when users on mobile devices take themselves offline.

According to Reuters, the software was supposed to be deployed at the Hawaii NSA facility before Snowden started working there in the spring of 2013 in order to comply with an executive order by President Barack Obama in the wake of the WikiLeaks scandal.

It's not clear that this particular failure had any direct impact on Snowden's ability to get classified documents, as he had already begun to download documents from NSA's network while working as a Dell contractor at another NSA facility in the year before. Previous reports indicated that Snowden had obtained the user credentials of NSA officials to elevate his access to the NSA's intranet.


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