American National Security Agency (NSA) and British intelligence have a hidden network access to several German operators, reports Der Spiegel, based on documents from Edward Snowden.
According to the German weekly, NSA program called “Treasure Map” has a clandestine access to Deutsche Telekom’s network and other smaller operators, which allows to reach Internet-connected devices – smartphones, computers and tablets. This program, named as a “Google Earth of the Internet” by Der Spiegel, serves to “planning of attacks” and “spy network” continues magazine, who could not obtain a response from the NSA and GCHQ , British service charge interceptions.
“Such cyber attack clearly violate German law,” commented Christian Steffen, general manager of Stellar operator, which Der Spiegel presented a document containing passwords belonging GCHQ company clients name a certain number of employees.
Alerted by the journal, Deutsche Telekom and regional operator Netcologne have not identified any suspect device and any data leakage. But according to the head of Deutsche Telekom Thomas Tschersich security, “foreign intelligence services access to our network is totally unacceptable.” “Examine any indication of a possible manipulation. Additionally, we alerted the authorities on this point,” said Tschersich quoted weekly.
Will be back with more details, soon !
UPDATE
What is the Treasure Map?
Treasure Map is the mandate for a massive raid on the digital world. It aims to map the Internet, and not just the large traffic channels, such as telecommunications cables. It also seeks to identify the devices across which our data flows, so-called routers.
In other words, every single end device that is connected to the Internet somewhere in the world: every smartphone, tablet and every computer is to be made visible. Such a map doesn’t just reveal one treasure. There are millions of them.
Treasure Map allows for the creation of an “interactive map of the global Internet” in “near real-time,” the document notes. Employees of the so-called “FiveEyes” intelligence agencies from Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which cooperate closely with the American agency NSA, can install and use the program on their own computers. One can imagine it as a kind of Google Earth for global data traffic, a bird’s eye view of the planet’s digital arteries.
You can read more details regarding the “Treasure Map” program here.
